Photo by Joachim Lesne on Unsplash
Last night’s GOP wipeout flipped control of both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate—a shift seen only twice before in the last 70 years—and gave the gun violence prevention movement strong majorities in both chambers.
The question now is, what will we do with it?
The last time there was a gun violence prevention majority in both chambers was the 117th Congress (2021-2023), which passed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the first major federal gun safety legislation to become law in decades. That law, signed by President Joe Biden, is seen as an instrumental part of the historic decline in firearm homicide over the last four years.
While the wishlist of new federal legislation is long—universal background checks; an assault weapons ban; extreme risk protection order (ERPO) implementation funding; and stronger secure storage requirements, to name a few—none of these measures is likely to be signed by Donald Trump. His administration has systematically dismantled long-standing gun violence prevention measures, including the nearly 100-year-old National Firearms Act, which regulated dangerous firearms and accessories such as silencers and short-barreled rifles.
For now, said Brady’s Kris Brown in a statement, “Congress must use every tool at its disposal to counter the Trump administration’s dangerous pandering to the gun industry and reckless rollbacks of gun safety measures, and hold the administration accountable for policies that undermine public safety. That means launching investigations, exercising its subpoena power, demanding answers from federal agencies, blocking gun-extremist judges, and pursuing litigation when necessary.”
Brady also called for investments to reduce the conditions that fuel gun crime, including investments in community violence intervention strategies that the Trump administration has attacked, despite clear evidence that they work.
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