Wow. The hits keep coming. This time in the U.S. Senate of all places.
One measure to curb gun violence in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre took a major step forward in the Senate Monday when a bipartisan group of senators agreed to push a bill designed to crack down on gun trafficking.
The measure, the Stop Illegal Trafficking of Firearms Act of 2013, merges a Democratic effort by Sens. Pat Leahy (Vt.) and Dick Durbin (Ill.) with a similar effort by Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Mark Kirk (R-Ill). It also adds another Republican as a supporter, Maine’s Susan Collins.
The bill would make it a crime — with stiff penalties — to purchase weapons on behalf of someone else who is barred from possessing weapons. Such “straw purchases” are believed to be the leading source of guns trafficked to criminals.
Yeah, it’s way early on this one, but clearly we have to take whatever we can get at this point.
(h/t David Benowitz)