Senate Gun Deal Centers On Mental Health, School Safety

AP: Senate Negotiators Announce A Deal On Guns, Breaking Logjam
Senate bargainers on Sunday announced the framework of a bipartisan response to last month’s mass shootings, a noteworthy but limited breakthrough offering modest gun curbs and stepped-up efforts to improve school safety and mental health programs. The proposal falls far short of tougher steps long sought by President Joe Biden and many Democrats. Even so, the accord was embraced by Biden and enactment would signal a significant turnabout after years of gun massacres that have yielded little but stalemate in Congress. (Fram, 6/12)

The Texas Tribune: Deal On Post-Uvalde Shooting Gun Legislation Reached In Senate
Sources involved with the negotiations caution there is not yet legislative text to the deal and its prospects remain fragile as the Senate heads into what is expected to be a frenetic week. That 10 Republican senators signed onto the plan adds confidence that a potential bill will overcome the 60-vote threshold needed to bypass a filibuster threat. The 10 Republican senators are John Cornyn of Texas, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Susan Collins of Maine, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, Roy Blunt of Missouri, Richard Burr of North Carolina, Rob Portman of Ohio and Mitt Romney of Utah. (Livingston, 6/12)

The New York Times: Gun Deal Is Less Than Democrats Wanted, But More Than They Expected 
The bipartisan gun safety deal announced Sunday is far from what Democrats would have preferred in the aftermath of the racist gun massacre in Buffalo and the mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, but it is considerably more than they hoped for initially. ... “We cannot let the congressional perfect be the enemy of the good,” said Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Senate Democrat, who said he would have preferred to bar military assault weapons. “Though this agreement falls short in this and other respects, it can and will make our nation safer.” (Hulse, 6/12)

Politico: Senators Strike Bipartisan Gun Safety Agreement 
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell released a statement welcoming the announcement as proof of “the value of dialogue and cooperation,” though he sidestepped a direct endorsement of the framework: “I continue to hope their discussions yield a bipartisan product that makes significant headway on key issues like mental health and school safety, respects the Second Amendment, earns broad support in the Senate, and makes a difference for our country.” (Everett and Levine, 6/12)

Roll Call: Bipartisan Senate Group Strikes Gun Deal Focused On School Safety, Mental Health
The American Firearms Association condemned the agreement, saying Republican senators had betrayed gun owners. “Republican senators were elected to stand up for our Constitutional rights, not sell them out to gun-grabbing Marxists,” the organization said in a statement. “The solution to gun violence is not gun control. It’s protecting our right to defend ourselves when the police are unable or refuse to do so, as we saw in Uvalde.” (Lesniewski, 6/12)

Survivors of gun violence share their reactions —

The New York Times: Gun Deal Stirs Hope But Also Frustration In Places Scarred By Shootings 
Americans in communities where lives have been forever changed by gun violence reacted to the bipartisan deal that was reached by Senate negotiators on Sunday with a glint of hope but more than a tinge of frustration. Any agreement is better than no agreement, many indicated, yet so much more could be done. ... In Orlando on Sunday — the sixth anniversary of the Pulse nightclub shooting — Ricardo Negron, 33, a voting rights activist and survivor of that attack, said that he was of two minds about the potential deal on gun safety measures. “It’s good to see them moving toward something,” he said. “But on the other hand, it’s just the bare minimum of the bare minimum.” (Ploeg, Sandoval, Rojas, Watkins and Southall, 6/12)

ABC News: Advocates, Survivors Applaud 'New Beginning' With Senate's Gun Deal -- But Want More Done 
Former Arizona Rep. Gabby Giffords, a mass shooting survivor, wrote on Twitter, "Eleven years ago, a bullet changed my life forever. Six of my constituents were killed, several more injured. And Congress has failed to get anything done since. But today, our country takes an important step forward with the announcement of a bipartisan framework on gun safety. This bipartisan agreement on gun safety could be the first time in 30 years that Congress takes major action on gun safety." ... Likewise, gun reform supporter Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter, Jaime, was killed at Parkland, also tweeted measured approval: "While much is not in this, the result is a 30 year breakthrough. This is gun safety legislation that will save lives and reduce the instances of gun violence." (Oppenheim and Bartash, 6/12)

In related news —

Reuters: Tens Of Thousands Rally Against Gun Violence In Washington, Across U.S. 
Tens of thousands of demonstrators descended on Washington and at hundreds of rallies across the United States on Saturday to demand that lawmakers pass legislation aimed at curbing gun violence following last month's massacre at a Texas elementary school. In the nation's capital, organizers with March for Our Lives (MFOL) estimated that 40,000 people assembled at the National Mall near the Washington Monument under occasional light rain. The gun safety group was founded by student survivors of the 2018 massacre at a Parkland, Florida, high school. (Hesson, 6/12)

ABC News: Sandy Hook Survivors Speak Out For First Time -- And Share Heartache 'That It Keeps Happening' 
Nicole was in the second grade when a gunman shot and killed 26 people at her school in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012. She and three other student survivors, as well as a school employee there that day, detailed their experience and the effects that day still has on them in an interview that aired Sunday with "This Week" co-anchor and Chief Global Affairs Correspondent Martha Raddatz. ... Living through a mass shooting changed all four of the students. For Nicole, that means anxiety. For Jackie and Maggie, trouble with loud noises. And for Andrew, it meant nightmares in the immediate months after. "I couldn't get the sounds out of my head during the night," he told ABC News. "I couldn't close my eyes without reliving it." (Mistry and Raddatz, 6/12)

KHN: Trauma Surgeons Detail The Horror Of Mass Shootings In The Wake Of Uvalde And Call For Reforms
When Dr. Roy Guerrero, a pediatrician in Uvalde, Texas, testified before a U.S. House committee Wednesday about gun violence, he told lawmakers about the horror of seeing the bodies of two of the 19 children killed in the Robb Elementary massacre. They were so pulverized, he said, that they could be identified only by their clothing. In recent years, the medical profession has developed techniques to help save more gunshot victims, such as evacuating patients rapidly. But trauma surgeons interviewed by KHN say that even those improvements can save only a fraction of patients when military-style rifles inflict the injury. Suffering gaping wounds, many victims die at the shooting scene and never make it to a hospital, they said. Those victims who do arrive at trauma centers appear to have more wounds than in years past, according to the surgeons. (Miller and Sausser, 6/10)