Oklahoma lawmakers vote against House gun legislation
The five Oklahomans in the U.S. House joined most of their Republican colleagues in voting against gun bills on Wednesday and Thursday, including a ban on sales of semi-automatic rifles to people under 21 and a federal "red flag" law.
Several proposals packaged into one piece of legislation cleared the House on a vote of 223 to 204 on Wednesday night, but the bill is unlikely to be considered in the Senate, where a bipartisan group of senators is trying to reach a compromise on less sweeping legislation. Five Republicans voted for the bill, while two Democrats opposed it.
Among the proposals packaged in the House legislation are restrictions on high-capacity magazines, mandates for at-home storage of guns and codifying the ban on bump stocks. The bill would also raise the legal age from 18 to 21 to buy some semi-automatic rifles, including the AR-15.
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On Thursday, the House approved a bill 224 to 202 that would create a federal "red flag" law similar to the ones on the books in 19 states. The law would authorize federal courts to issue “extreme risk protection orders” prohibiting a person from purchasing or possessing a firearm if deemed a threat to himself or others. The bill was supported by five Republicans, while one Democrat voted against it.
Democrats argued that Congress was compelled to act in the wake of recent mass shootings that killed dozens of people, including 19 children at a school in Texas, while Republicans countered that the proposals on the House floor wouldn’t have prevented any of the killings but would deprive people of their Second Amendment rights.
"This legislation would not improve public safety, prevent these tragedies from occurring in the future, or solve the underlying issues,” Rep. Stephanie Bice, R-Oklahoma City, said after the vote.
“I support numerous pieces of legislation that would address root causes, such as prioritizing mental health services for all Americans, and strengthening school security.”
Bice noted that a federal appeals court had recently struck down California’s law banning the sale of semi-automatic rifles to people under 21.
More: Tulsa mass shooting prompts diverging political responses
During debate on Wednesday, several House members mentioned the shootings in Tulsa last week in which a man killed four people on the campus of the Saint Francis Health System.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Maryland, said the shooter, Michael Louis, “got the gun approximately three hours before he shot Dr. (Preston Phillips). Filled obviously with passion and hate and anger at the pain he apparently was suffering physically and perhaps emotionally.
“So what did he do? He went down, quickly got a gun, an AR-15 to be exact, and went and shot not only (Phillips) but three other people in the process.”
Hoyer said the House had previously voted to extend the waiting period for background checks and that, if the Senate had gone along, the change might have prevented the Tulsa shooting.
“This gentleman who bought that gun three hours before he killed (Phillips) or thereabouts would have had time to cool off, to perhaps have second thoughts, to perhaps have saved the life of a doctor whose job it was to save lives,” Hoyer said.
Louis killed himself after killing four people at the health center.
Rep. Kevin Hern, a Republican, who represents Tulsa, said after the vote, “My constituents have made their feelings incredibly clear: they are overwhelmingly opposed to any attempt by President Biden and Congressional Democrats to take away our Second Amendment rights,” said Rep. Hern. “I fully support my constituents in these beliefs. The legislation before the House today is an attack on the Constitution that violates our Second Amendment and due process rights. I voted against these bills because they fail to address the true problem and instead target law-abiding citizens.”
In the debate on Thursday, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-New York, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said red flag laws had worked in states to prevent murders and suicides. And he said the legislation included due process provisions "that strike the appropriate balance between protecting the rights of the gun owner and ensuring communities' safety."
Bice said after the vote that the bill "uses broad language to cast aside an individual’s due process rights and represents a serious infringement of the Constitutional rights of responsible and lawful gun owners."
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Oklahoma lawmakers vote against US House gun bills
