WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A bipartisan group of U.S. senators announced on Sunday that it has agreed on a framework for potential legislation on gun safety including support for state “red flag” laws, tougher background checks for firearms buyers under 21 and a crackdown on a practice called “straw purchases.”
“Our plan saves lives while also protecting the constitutional rights of law-abiding Americans,” the group, led by Democrat Chris Murphy and Republican John Cornyn, said in a statement. “We look forward to earning broad, bipartisan support and passing our commonsense proposal into law.”
The talks followed a series of high-profile mass shootings in the United States, including one at a school in Uvalde, Texas, last month that killed 19 young children and one also in May in a Buffalo, New York, supermarket that killed 10 Black victims.
The agreement was announced a day after tens of thousands in Washington and at hundreds of other places across the United States rallied to demand that lawmakers pass legislation aimed at curbing gun violence.
(Reporting by Richard Cowan in Washington and Brendan O’Brien in Chicago; Editing by Will Dunham and Scott Malone)
