The Senate voted to advance bipartisan gun legislation on Tuesday, with hopes of passing it prior to the July 4 recess.
All 50 members of the Democratic caucus joined 14 Republicans in moving the legislation forward. The bill comes after a number of mass shootings, most notably in Buffalo, N.Y., and Uvalde, Texas.
The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act falls short of more expansive proposals passed by Democrats in the House and is already facing opposition from top House Republicans. Should it become law, however, the bill would be the most sweeping gun safety legislation passed by Congress in decades.
(Christopher Wilson. “What’s in the Senate’s new gun control bill.” Yahoo News. June 22, 2022.)
Thank God the Senate has passed new legislation to stop gun violence. This most significant step promises finally to take much-needed actions to help fight the epidemic of death and destruction.
The bill’s chief negotiators – Sens. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., John Cornyn, R-Texas, Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., and Thom Tillis, R-N.C. – released a joint statement celebrating the agreement …
“Today, we finalized bipartisan, commonsense legislation to protect America’s children, keep our schools safe, and reduce the threat of violence across our country. Our legislation will save lives and will not infringe on any law-abiding Americans’ Second Amendment rights. We look forward to earning broad, bipartisan support and passing our commonsense legislation into law.”
(Dareh Gregorian, Julie Tsirkin, Sahil Kapur and Frank Thorp V. “Senators release text of bipartisan gun bill, seek final passage this week.” NBC News. June 21, 2022.)
How About Local Reaction?
In 2020, the Scioto County Commissioners designated Scioto County, Ohio, as a "Second Amendment Sanctuary." This designation was clearly political posturing rooted in the strong influence of the gun lobby that has deep connections to corporate partners in the firearms industry. It was certainly a shameful rebuke of Gov. DeWine's efforts to allow tighter gun control.
The commissioners at the time took it upon themselves – without debate or majority approval – to declare Scioto County a place that stood in opposition of reform to the Second Amendment.
“Second Amendment Sanctuaries” are defined as states, counties, or localities that adopt laws to prohibit or impede the enforcement of gun control measures believed to infringe on the rights of the Second Amendment such as universal gun background checks, high capacity magazine bans, assault weapons bans, and red flag laws.
Now that the Senate passed new legislation including some of these very measures, will the commissioners once more defiantly raise up their sanctuary ordinance and urge local citizens to fight such restrictions? In fact, Second Amendment Sanctuaries claim refuge from superior government enactments. For example, such resolutions claim an absolute right to protect local citizens from any statewide gun control law by refusing to enforce those laws in their jurisdiction.
The resolution in 2020 proclaimed sanctuaries would seek to resist at the local level the enforcement of laws passed by a superior governmental entity, be it the federal or state government. In a predominantly conservative, overwhelmingly Republican county with a “sanctuary resolution” already in place, such resistance again comes front and center. I can only speculate on the commissioners response to the new gun legislation passed by the Senate. I do so by reviewing their recent commitment to disallow change and reform.
Shawn Fields, Assistant Professor of Law at Campbell University School of Law and author of the article “Second Amendment Sanctuaries” in the Northwestern University Law Review, writes …
“Joseph Blocher (scholar and author of articles on federal and constitutional law published in Harvard Law Review, Yale Law Journal, Stanford Law Review, Duke Law Journal, Yale Journal of International Law, and other leading journals) and others have advanced compelling arguments that the scope of Second Amendment rights should be locally tailored, a view buttressed by this nation’s long history of regulating firearms at the local level.
“But whether recent statewide gun control proposals run afoul of federal constitutional guarantees in any locality remains an open question, particularly given the relatively unsettled state of Second Amendment doctrine. Moreover, even if these regulations present unconstitutional infringements, the proposition that local executive actors like sheriffs and prosecutors have the authority to make this determination is a controversial one at best.”
(Shawn Fields. “Second Amendment Sanctuaries.” Second Thoughts. The Center for Firearms Law at Duke University. May 15, 2020.)
Any defense of the sanctuary movement must wrestle with its unsavory roots, including the political activism of far-right and white nationalist groups in Virginia and elsewhere. Of course, it must also address the unprecedented gun violence in the United States –
the CDC reports in 2020, there were 45,222 firearm-related deaths in the United States. That’s about 124 people dying from a firearm-related injury each day. More than 4 out of every 10 were firearm homicides.
For local residents to be certain of the proposed changes in the law, here are the key provisions in the 80-page bill:
* Funding for crisis centers and so-called red flag laws
Under the legislation, $750 million would be allotted over the next five years to help states implement red flag laws, which allow authorities to temporarily confiscate guns from individuals deemed a threat to themselves or others. (Similar laws already exist in 19 states and the District of Columbia.) The legislation allows for the implementation of these programs through mental health, drug and veterans’ courts.
* Closing the “boyfriend loophole”
While spouses, co-parents or cohabitating partners convicted of domestic violence are already banned from purchasing firearms, abusers in relationships between people who are not married and live separately are still able to purchase guns, creating the so-called “boyfriend loophole.” (According to Everytown, a gun safety advocacy group, about 70 women are shot and killed by an intimate partner every month.)
Under the new legislation, anyone convicted of domestic violence against a former or current dating partner would be banned from purchasing a weapon.
* Expanded background checks for younger buyers
The legislation calls for an expansion of background checks into buyers under 21 years of age, providing three business days for the check into their criminal and mental health history to be completed. If that background check finds something questionable in a potential buyer’s record, the legislation would provide for an additional seven business days to look into the buyer.
* Funding for mental health and school security
The bill provides funding for expanding access to mental health services, including making it easier for Americans on Medicaid to use telehealth services and work with “community-based mental health and substance use disorder treatment providers and organizations.” And it would provide additional funding for the national suicide prevention hotline (since guns accounted for a majority of suicide deaths in 2020) while schools would receive funding to increase the number of staff members providing mental health services.
The bill also provides $300 million for the STOP School Violence Act for increased security at schools, although some Democrats had expressed concern about this aspect of the bill. Last week, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said she was worried about “the expansion of background checks into juvenile records,” arguing that previous attempts to secure schools were both ineffective and harmful.
* Licensed dealers and gun trafficking
The legislation would also require more sellers to register as “Federally Licensed Firearm Dealers,” including anyone who sells guns to “predominantly earn a profit.” These sellers would in turn be required to run background checks on potential buyers and keep records of the sales.
The bill would also impose penalties on “straw” purchasers who buy guns for people who can’t pass a background check.
(Christopher Wilson. “What’s in the Senate’s new gun control bill.” Yahoo News. June 22, 2022.)
Conclusion
You may say the designation of “Second Amendment Sanctuary” is purely ornamental and has no real teeth in courts; however, I beg to differ. When a county passes such clearly political stances – beliefs that defy measures to save lives – it becomes emblematic of its stubborn and determined resistance to compromise and its determination to prohibit or impede the enforcement of certain gun control measures.
No amendment or law should be beyond measures to redefine its parameters or to reconstruct its intentions. In addition, the madness of “no infringement” of the 2nd Amendment runs counter to its intentions. The Heller Court (the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller) explained that the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.
In the years since that decision, there’s been a flood of legal challenges to federal and state gun control laws. According to one study, in 94 percent of those cases, courts have found that reasonable gun regulations didn’t violate the Second Amendment. They’ve mostly relied on the Heller Court’s explanation that its ruling shouldn’t “cast doubt” on several longstanding gun restrictions, including bans on gun ownership by certain individuals (like felons), prohibitions on some types of “dangerous and unusual weapons,” limits on carrying firearms in certain public places, and requirements for gun sales.
(Ruben, Eric and Blocher, Joseph. “From Theory to Doctrine: An Empirical Analysis of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms after Heller.” Duke Law Journal, Vol. 67, No. 7, 2018, Duke Law School Public Law & Legal Theory Series 2018-35. April 18, 2018.)
(W. E. Burger. “Second Amendment Does Not Guarantee the Right To Own a Gun.” U.S. Department of Justice. From Gun Control, P 99-102, 1992, Charles P Cozic, ed. -- See NCJ-160164. 1992)
I wonder where Scioto County officials will stand on the new legislation. In this red stronghold, I can only imagine stiff resistance. I and other citizens have recently petitioned the commissioners to rescind the “sanctuary” designation – but we have been met with absolutely no reply or no concern about the intent or meaning of their gun consecration. I hope the latest news from the U.S. Senate will change minds and open a dialogue to prevent gun violence through better restrictions.
So, once again, I will send this blog entry to the Scioto commissioners to inform them of our concern. I ask, once again, to stop the “sanctuary” resistance to reform. This time I ask it in the memory of 4-year-old Zsailynn Amari Conley who was killed in a shooting on the night of June 12, 2022, while sitting on his porch in Portsmouth, Ohio. Local police believe two different guns were used in the incident although it is still unclear how many suspects might have been involved. What is clear is the unspeakable devastation these bullets caused and the interminable grief suffered by the family.
We the Grieving
(January 13, 2020)
By Linda Eve Diamond
We the Grieving
hold candlelight vigils,
voices and moments of silence
spinning
through darkness—as gun deaths mount
and children
practice active shooter drills
We the Tired Masses
petition, speak,
write and sing to the choir, cry and shout
into
videos, microphones, megaphones
mementos, stuffed bears and
pillows
We the Calculated Risks
march, run, vote,
write stories, columns, poems, songs,
posts…
while victims are reported, stacked and sorted
in cold
statistical fields of incalculable loss
We the Problem Solvers
share stories
mapping incidents of variable Xs and whys
charting
possible solutions in which X
might have come out alive
We the Target Audience
endure daily barrages
of blood-red herrings and black-or-white
fallacies
as we break down, over and over, the arguments
and
essences of commonsense and freedom
We the People live and grieve for
peace, Justice,
Liberty and Tranquility for
ourselves and our Posterity.
Linda Eve Diamond is a Florida-based poet whose work has appeared in Poets Reading the News, Your Daily Poem,Tuck Magazine, High Shelf Press, and others. Find her poetry collections and selected poems at http://lindaevediamond.com.
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