[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 107 (Thursday, June 23, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Page S3102]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                    Bipartisan Safer Communities Act

  Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, the American people do not have to 
choose between safer schools and the Constitution, and neither does the 
U.S. Senate.
  The American people want their constitutional rights protected and 
their kids to be safe in school. They want both of those things at 
once, and that is just what the bill before the Senate will help 
accomplish.
  Thanks to the leadership and dedication of Senator Cornyn, Senator 
Tillis, and several of their counterparts across the aisle, we are 
considering a bipartisan bill that will make our country safer without 
making it any less free. This is the sweet spot: making America safer, 
especially for kids in school, without making our country one bit less 
free.
  The legislation before us would make our communities and schools 
safer without laying one finger on the Second Amendment for law-abiding 
citizens. Its key provisions are hugely popular with the American 
people. This bill supplies significant new funding to law enforcement 
and police, to school security, and to mental health treatment both in 
school and in the wider community.
  Under this bill, if a teenager has been convicted of a crime or 
adjudicated to be mentally ill, even before their 18th birthday, that 
important information will show up in a firearms background check until 
they are 21. This strengthens the existing background check system 
without expanding it.
  States will receive new money for crisis intervention programs of 
their own choosing, and if they choose to use the money for so-called 
red flag laws, those laws will have to meet a new, higher standard for 
due process.
  This is a commonsense package. Its provisions are very, very popular. 
It contains zero--zero--new restrictions, zero new waiting periods, 
zero mandates, and zero bans of any kind for law-abiding gun owners.
  Police and law enforcement support the bill strongly. The police 
chiefs' association and the Fraternal Order of Police say: ``This 
bipartisan measure is . . . one that will save lives,'' according to 
the FOP and the police chiefs' association.
  The National Sheriffs' Association calls it:

       A bill that can actually save lives . . . that allows the 
     States to craft their own unique answers to the questions 
     raised by gun violence.

  After years--literally years--of liberal demands that would make war 
on citizens' constitutional rights, our Democratic colleagues have 
finally accepted that we can make schools and communities safer without 
impeding on the Second Amendment.
  We can do more to protect innocent Americans, schoolkids especially, 
without--without--eroding the Bill of Rights 1 inch, and that is just 
what the Senate will do when we pass this bill.