The four senators at the center of bipartisan gun safety talks will meet Monday afternoon as they race to clinch a deal with mass shootings across the country continuing unabated and the fate of expanded background checks up in the air.
The quartet of Sens. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), John Cornyn (R-Texas), Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) is focused on a package that would expand background checks, state red flag laws, enhance school safety and provide new mental health programs, according to multiple people familiar with the talks. Those four senators will continue their discussions this week, anchoring a larger group of senators’ negotiations over the issue.
Nine years after Sens. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) struck an agreement to expand background checks that most Republicans rejected on the Senate floor, the current bipartisan group is focused on significant yet more modest reforms that can win 60 votes in the chamber. One proposal under discussion is expanding background checks for people younger than 21 — by opening up their juvenile records to more scrutiny or enacting a waiting period for their firearm purchases — according to one person with direct knowledge of the talks.
The small-group talks are fluid, and no final decision has been made. But if successful, such an idea would amount to the most substantive background checks expansion in decades. In the evenly divided Senate, any such proposal would need the support of at least 10 Republican senators, a high bar that members in the gun safety group still think could be achievable.
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