Spurred by a pair of mass shootings in the past week, U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., has reintroduced legislation that would crack down on illegal gun sales and raise the penalties for “straw purchasers” of firearms.
He promoted his proposal Tuesday at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, and emphasized his role in securing money for health organizations to study gun violence as a public health issue.
Senators had planned last week to discuss constitutional steps to curb gun violence, but Tuesday’s hearing took on a more urgent and sobering tone after two mass shootings in recent days. Leahy’s comments come just one day after 10 people were killed in a mass shooting in Boulder, Colorado, and one week after eight people, including six Asian women, were killed in a series of shootings in Atlanta.
“We’d treat any other epidemic killing tens of thousands of Americans each year as a public health epidemic,” Leahy said.
Leahy’s bill, co-sponsored by Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Dick Durbin, D-Ill., would be the first to make straw purchases an explicit crime. Violators could face prison sentences of up to 25 years, a drastic increase from the five-year maximum for lying on the federal gun-buying form.
The bill would also impose penalties on people who sell or transport a firearm if they have reason to believe the weapon would be used in a crime.
A straw purchase is when an individual buys something on behalf of someone who is unable to do so themselves — for example, when someone who can pass a background check buys a weapon for someone who can’t.
Straw purchases are technically illegal already. All buyers from licensed firearms dealers must fill out a federal form that includes a question on whether the firearm is being purchased for someone else. It is a felony to lie on any questions on the form.
However, “I know when I was a prosecutor, and I’ve seen it since, so many guns are bought in straw purchases and end up in criminal hands,” Leahy said at Tuesday’s hearing. “There’s no federal law that adequately addresses this type of firearm trafficking, and there’s more we can do to stop these purchases.”
Leahy introduced an earlier version of the bill in 2013 after the Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, which killed 20 children ages 6 and 7 and six staff members. It received 58 votes, including three from Republican senators, but fell short of the 60 votes needed to pass.
In a question posed to Fernando C. Spagnolo, the police chief in Waterbury, Connecticut, Leahy reflected on conversations he’d had with police while he was the Chittenden County state’s attorney. So many officers told him they feel safer when they know fewer guns are in the hands of criminals, Leahy said.
“Kind of an easy question: I assume you feel the same way as the police officers who were under my jurisdiction felt?” Leahy asked.
“Absolutely, senator,” Spagnolo said.
Leahy also noted he helped acquire funding for the Centers for Disease Control to study gun violence in 2019.
