now, change the background check, close loopholes, make sure there s adequate background checks. we can raise the age for assault weapons. i would ban them, but at least we can raise the age. we can close the boyfriend loophole federally because a lot of states are still allowing people who are convicted of domestic abuse to go out and get a gun. that s my bill. we can finally do something when it comes to extreme risk orders or as they are known red flag laws. all of these things are on the table. i think the best way to do it, have it be upheld constitutionally by the u.s. supreme court is to get their act together. i say to my colleagues on the republican side, if they are not willing to do that after we saw those families come and testify or the dad goes to a grocery store in buffalo to get a birthday cake for a son and never comes back, when are they going to be willing to do it? if they won t, we have to march to the ballot box and make the point there.
always the concern that these kinds of things are open to strategy by mcconnell. and we saw that with bipartisan infrastructure. i think it s actually sort of successful in its own way. and it s like, if you okay talks, then you can space out the momentum. then, public attention moves on and you can just drop it when people are paying attention to something else. you have to always worry about that, for good reason. and you are astute. you know that. no one is going to agree to a study. right? to something that means nothing. we have been trying for years to do something on the extreme risk orders, what is also known as red flags. i think that s a better way to describe it, as lucy baftas, in her bill, extreme risk orders. i ve been trying for years to close the boyfriend loophole, which is a major cause of death of women in domestic violence homicides. these things are all on the table. so, i just want to move forward right now. and the american people want us to get something done.
exactly. though for the record there was a movement there to try to hold gun companies liable. was it successful? no. but did it put on the table a new kind of question for people to raise, which is, like, can you hold manufacturers liable in one way or another? is that fight still worth having? we ll see. and right now the catalyst event coming off of parkland, unfortunately, were those sort of red flag laws, the kind of extreme risk orders that says if you re a risk to yourself and others, maybe your curb your access to weapons. i live 30 minutes from parkland, and i have a cousin who was killed at pulse. his name was jerry wright. in fact, his parent wrs republican voters and republican donors. and after parkland, under governor rick scott back then, we passed in florida a ban for 18-21 year olds where you have to now be 21. this is the same rick scott who a few years later got elected to the senate as a republican and
times kids and teachers, their sort of fellow cohort notice these things, but there s no way to tell law enforcement so to speak, right? there s a huge gap between what i might have seen or heard from someone and who do i get it to? who do i tell, and then what do they do? and once you tell them that, can you infringe on their rights? do you trust law enforcement not to racially profile? do you trust law enforcement to do what they re supposed to do in terms of prevention efforts? and even in the case of, say, red flag laws, you know, in florida they didn t necessarily fund training to put those in place. so does your local police department have the ability to process even extreme risk orders? so there s sort of like a lot of moving targets, and i think sorry, that was a bad way of saying it, but the goalpost keeps changing, and i think that s what makes it difficult. i don t say that nra is not a problem. but i also think it s creating a