In the Main Legislature, Democrats on Wednesday unveiled comprehensive gun violence measures to add the firearm bill and mental health expenses proposed by the governor after the most deadly shoots in the state’s history, including the 72 -hour waiting period for the most gun procurement.
Senate President Troy Jackson said MPs are not interested in removing guns, but they want consensus on ways to stop gun violence after shooting, claiming 18 people’s lives.
He said, “Level-headed people should have a way to come together and find out a way that may probably stop, or make it difficult, to be anything like that,” he said.
Bills suit will expand the expenditure on mental health, create a mobile crisis center and give 911 callers the option to connect with the mental health crisis workers as well as law enforcement. They will also ban bump stocks or other physical modifications that can convert a semotomatic rifle into machine guns.
Some proposals received a frosty reception from Republican – especially compulsory waiting period for gun procurement. Republican tried unsuccessfully to block it, given that a similar bill was rejected last year.
Sen Matt Harrington, R-York, accused Democrats of trying to do RAM through proposals that had failed earlier.
“These bills are year -head -year -old. They are defeated. Now here we are working with them again because they do not want to ruin the crisis in Leviston, ”he said.
Gun control has proved difficult in a situation in the past that has a strong hunting tradition. But with the goal of stopping gun violence and suicides, there was widespread support for the expansion of mental health treatment. This is some harrington and many other Republicans agree.
House speaker will spend a bill sponsored by Rachel Talbot Ross to spend $ 17.5 million to create six crisis centers, prevention of violence in the Department of Health and Human Services, forms the office of mobile crisis reaction teams and provides suicide prevention materials distributed by gun dealers.
His bill will also create a statewide notification process for large -scale firing, which will address concerns from the deaf community that some people had trouble getting information as a tragedy in Leviston.
Democratic village. Janet Mills already examined the background for advertising private sales, building a network of mental health crisis centers and a large penalty for negligent private sales to prohibited people. She wants to allow police officers to go directly to a judge directly to a judge to start the process of removing the gun from someone in a psychiatric crisis.
The proposal follows the tragedy that an army store set fire to a bowling street in October and the bar of Leviston. Apart from 18 deaths, thirteen people were injured. Gunman, 40 -year -old Robert Card, died of suicide.
Addressing MPs last month, Mills urged the MPs not to give the condemn view that trying to change gun laws is meaningless as the laws will simply break. The governor said, “For the sake of communities, individuals and families now do nothing, do nothing for our state.”
The Governor and an independent investigative Commission appointed by the Attorney General may release initial conclusions early next month to help inform the decisions of MPs. The Legislature is due to wrapping its work in April.