Congress passes gun bill. How did lawmakers from Missouri and Kansas vote?
Congress on Friday passed bipartisan legislation to address gun violence, an unlikely compromise agreement with a Republican Party steadfast in its opposition to gun regulation that marked the most significant attempt by federal lawmakers address the issue in nearly 30 years.
“Tonight, after 28 years of inaction, bipartisan members of Congress came together to heed the call of families across the country and passed legislation to address the scourge of gun violence in our communities,” President Joe Biden said Thursday night. “Families in Uvalde and Buffalo - and too many tragic shootings before - have demanded action. And tonight, we acted.”
In the U.S. Senate, 15 Republicans crossed party lines to support the bill. In the House 14 Republicans supported the bill. But of the members in the Kansas and Missouri delegation only one Republican voted for the bill — retiring U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Missouri.
Blunt was one of 10 Republicans who signed onto an initial framework of the legislation in the aftermath of two high profile mass shootings — one a racist attack on a supermarket in Buffalo, New York and the other an attack on elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.
“When this discussion about gun violence started, everybody always says, well, a big part of the problem here is the mental health delivery systems not working,’ Blunt said. “And so we were able to come back and say, look, we’ve got the example.”
That example was the system of certified community behavioral health centers. Blunt and U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow, a Democrat from Michigan, have been working to build the program for nearly 10 years.
It’s based on the last bill President John F. Kennedy signed in 1963, the Community Mental Health Act. The law was supposed to provide funding for community mental health centers and research across the country. But in reality, it ended up closing a lot of troubled mental health institutions and the burden caring for people fell on police departments and emergency rooms.
To fix the problem, Blunt and Stabenow wanted to establish a program to address the part of Kennedy’s bill that fell through the cracks, funding for mental health centers. They created a program where clinics would get funding to expand the scope of mental health and substance abuse programs in their community. The senators got enough federal funding for a pilot program in eight states. Missouri was one of them.
Since the program started four years ago, the number of people served by Missouri’s behavioral health centers has grown to around 150,000 people. The program has decreased emergency room visits by 21 percent over the past four years, according to an impact report by the Missouri Behavioral Health Council.
Kansas is not one of the 10 states selected to be a part of the pilot program in 2017, but there are individual sites in the state. States that have individual centers would be the most likely to expand the program, Blunt said.
Mass shootings frequently lead to conversations about mental health as people try to understand how someone could commit such violence. While Blunt was quick to point out that people with mental health problems are more likely to be victims of crimes than the perpetrators, he and Stabenow saw an opportunity to get more funding for their program.
The majority of gun deaths in the United States are suicide, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
Despite Blunt’s role in securing mental health funding, he couldn’t convince his Republican colleagues in Kansas and Missouri to support the bill.
U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, denounced the bill for weeks, saying a provision that encourages states to implement “red flag laws,” where law enforcement can temporarily take guns away from someone the court has decided poses a threat to themselves or others, chipped away at gun rights.
U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kansas, denounced the legislation as a “gun grabbing bill.”
U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kansas, said he wanted to focus on enforcing existing gun laws and that the problem couldn’t be solved by the federal government.
“We ought to always be working to instill family values, rid our communities of hate, support our law enforcement and end the stigma of mental health.”
The vote comes the day after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a New York law requiring people to list a reason for why they needed to carry a concealed weapon was unconstitutional.
U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Connecticut, who pushed for the gun bill, said Thursday afternoon he was uncertain how the ruling would apply to the current bill.
Still, lawmakers celebrated the bill as one that would help save lives, even as Republicans like Blunt have faced backlash from Republicans in their state.
Blunt said Wednesday he has gone hunting with U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, a Republican from Texas who helped bring the deal together and was booed at the Texas Republican Convention earlier this month.
“We both probably lost our A rating with the NRA,” Blunt said.
The bill passed the House of Representatives on Friday with an 234-193 vote. None of the House Republicans from Kansas or Missouri supported the bill.
Democrats in the House of Representatives expressed disappointment that the bill did not go farther in attempting to prevent gun violence.
U.S. Rep. Emaunel Cleaver, a Democrat from Kansas City, said the overwhelming majority of the American public wants more restrictions on guns. He predicted members of Congress will spend the next decade working to pass stricter gun laws.
“It does enough for the moment,” Cleaver said. “Incrementalism in most cases is not good. But in this arena it’s got to be looked at as positive.”
