WASHINGTON — It didn’t happen after 13 people were killed at Columbine in 1999, when 26 were gunned down in Newtown in 2012 or when 17 people were murdered at Parkland in 2018.
But the Senate is finally engaging in serious discussions over a bipartisan gun policy agreement that, if fruitful, proponents say would save lives, even if they result in a far less ambitious policy than what progressives say is necessary.
The horrific nature of the shooting of young children in Uvalde, Texas, as well as its timing — 10 days after a gunman massacred Black shoppers in a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, in what police described as a racially motivated attack –- has created the political incentive for the first serious gun negotiations on Capitol Hill in decades. If a deal comes together and makes it to President Biden’s desk, it would mark the first gun legislation since Congress passed the 1994 assault weapons ban.
