Heinrich Delivers Remarks On Senate Floor On Bipartisan Safer Communities Act

WASHINGTON - Today, U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) spoke on the Senate Floor about the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, legislation to reduce gun violence. Senator Heinrich played a key role in including language to stop illegal gun trafficking and define and increase penalties for straw purchasing.

Senator Heinrich is a member of the bipartisan group of senators of 10 Democrats and 10 Republicans that announced the legislation earlier this week. The group includes leadership from U.S. Senators Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), John Cornyn (R-Tex.), Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.).

A one pager on the bill is available here. The full bill text can be found here.

Senator Heinrich’s remarks as prepared for delivery are below.

Mr. President,

Like many of my constituents in New Mexico, I am a gun owner.

I have a sincerely held respect of law abiding gun ownership.

Many of my most cherished memories involve responsible use of a firearm - to feed my family and to forge memories with my sons and my closest friends.

But those same sons grew up doing active shooter drills in their classrooms.

Something that would have been absolutely unimaginable when I was their age.

And just this spring, my son’s high school was on lockdown when I arrived due to a nearby shooting that involved students.

That type of experience has become all too common in our country.

This gun violence that our communities are experiencing is appalling and unacceptable.

It’s evident from the unthinkable mass shootings like the horrific events we have witnessed in Uvalde, Buffalo, Tulsa, Vestavia Hills, and El Paso.

And it’s evident in the mounting number of gun homicides and gun suicides that have taken tens of thousands of lives each year.

My home state of New Mexico continues to struggle with one of the highest rates of gun deaths in the country.

In recent years, far too many New Mexicans have lost friends and family members to this epidemic of violence.

I personally refuse to accept the idea that we are so divided in this country that we can’t do something to make this situation better. 

That is why I joined my good friend, Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, and a number of my colleagues from both sides of the aisle, to try and chart a meaningful path forward.

Over these past weeks, we have engaged in difficult but productive conversations.

We found areas of agreement on real solutions that we can, and we will, pass here in the United States Senate.

Our bipartisan negotiations, and the legislation that they have produced, prove that we can work together in this body.

And they show that when we set aside the vicious politics that have held us back for too long on this particular issue, we can actually create policies that save lives.

The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act includes federal resources to help states and Tribes implement Crisis Intervention Programs.

New Mexico passed a law to establish one of these programs just last year.

The goal was to ensure deadly weapons were kept out of the hands of those that a court, with due process, determined to be a significant danger to themselves or others.

But, as of last month, New Mexico had only used our law 9 times—primarily due to a lack of funding, resources, and training. 

Just last month, on Mother’s Day, New Mexico tragically lost two teens - shot and killed by a man who very likely could have had his firearm removed using New Mexico’s crisis intervention law.

The alleged suspect had been issued a temporary restraining order at the request of his former girlfriend, and the mother of one of the victims.

The restraining order showed that he was in possession of two firearms.

Unfortunately, the local sheriff’s office failed to recognize the threat he posed, and failed to use our state’s law to remove the firearms that he used to take the lives of two young New Mexicans.

If we can provide our law enforcement officers and courts the funding and training they need to make Crisis Intervention laws effective, we can protect our communities and ensure that future lives are not lost.

The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act will help us do just that.

Our legislation also enhances the review process for firearms buyers under 21 years of age.

This new process will require an investigative period to review criminal and mental health records, including checks with state databases and local law enforcement.

Over the last four years, six of the nine deadliest mass shootings were by people who were 21 or younger.

The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act ensures we respond to this deadly trend in a meaningful way.

Our legislation also makes clear who the federal firearm licensing requirements apply to – leading to more firearms sales that require a background check.

We are finally making sure that convicted domestic violence abusers and individuals subject to domestic violence restraining orders are included in the federal background check database—whether or not the abuser is married to the victim.

That has long been a major failure in federal law.  

And it has allowed dangerous abusers who are dating but not married to their partners, but whom we know pose a violent threat, to acquire deadly weapons.

This provision alone will save an enormous number of lives.

Our legislation will also make historic investments in community behavioral health and school-based mental health services.

And it will increase access to behavioral health services through telehealth.

The bill will help support school violence prevention efforts and provide training to school personnel and students so that they can recognize the signs that so often precede many of theses most violent shooting events. 

Over the course of our negotiations, I worked especially hard on a few key provisions with my colleague from Maine, Senator Susan Collins.

Our provisions will crack down on straw purchasing and trafficking of firearms.

These provisions will directly reduce gun violence in our home states and internationally.

And let me take a moment to explain how.

Under current law, it’s a minor, paperwork offense to buy a gun for someone else – and even then, that only applies if you buy the gun from a federal firearm licensee.

Under the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, we are making it a serious crime to buy a gun for someone else when you know that person will use the gun to commit a felony or that they are not allowed to buy a gun themselves.

That applies whether you buy the gun from a federal firearm licensee or not.

And the consequences of this simple change will be real.

It will keep deadly weapons out of the hands of people who would use them to hurt others.

And it will level serious consequences for those who break the law.

Just last year, a New Mexico State Police Officer was tragically killed during a traffic stop in Deming, New Mexico.

Officer Darian Jarrott was shot and killed by a convicted felon whose wife had allegedly purchased the gun for him.

She is now being prosecuted under the paperwork offense that is currently on the books.

But under the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, she would be facing more severe and deserved consequences for her role in the tragic death of a state police officer.

This legislation will also stop the type of organized straw purchasing and trafficking we have seen too often in New Mexico and elsewhere.

Right now, law enforcement has to watch as an organized chain of straw purchases happens, one after another, intended to protect the person most at fault – the mastermind of the operation – by keeping them far removed from the purchase that happens at an FFL—a federal firearm licensee.

Our law enforcement watch this happen, but they can only go after the person who walked into the federal firearm licensee and made the very first of the straw purchases.

That’s usually the person least involved in the scheme.

But that’s about to change.

Soon, these ringleaders won’t be able to distance themselves from the law.

With our new straw purchase provision, law enforcement will be able to go after every link in the illegal chain of purchases – to take down the entire ring, not just the vulnerable individuals these rings sometimes rely on to make the initial purchase.

And there’s more. 

While trafficking firearms into the U.S. is a major federal crime under existing laws, trafficking firearms out of the U.S. has not been.

And for years, this has meant that firearms trafficked out of the United States are the primary supply of guns used to commit violent crimes in Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala.  

It has also invited dangerous firearm trafficking into communities on both sides of our nation’s southern and northern borders.

We saw this in my home state about decade ago when a major firearms trafficking ring was uncovered in Columbus, New Mexico.

This trafficking operation involved the Chief of Police, the Mayor of Columbus, a Village Trustee, and an estimated 190 firearms, including large numbers of hand guns and assault rifles.

The crime they were charged with?

Lying on their paperwork.

Not anymore.

The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act takes this violence on with the severity that it deserves.

It gives law enforcement the tools they need to stop this activity, and the violence it directly and indirectly creates in our communities and within our borders.

By taking on the violence that families are fleeing in their home countries—violence that our inadequate gun laws have actually contributed to—we are also taking meaningful action to address a root cause behind so many refugees coming to our country.

Now I fully recognize that the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act is a compromise.

Many of the parents and students who have raised their voices to demand action on gun violence would like us to go further.

But progress has to start somewhere.

The hardest part of every negotiation is letting go of the perfect for the possible.

And I am confident that the legislation we are voting on will make a real difference in reducing gun violence.

A difference that will be measured in lives.

It will boost public safety, invest in mental health care, and keep more firearms out of the hands of those who would use them against their communities.

The painful truth is that we can never bring back those precious children whose lives were cut short —in Uvalde, Texas, in Parkland, Florida, in Newtown, Connecticut, or at Aztec High School, West Mesa High School, Deming Middle School, and Washington Middle School in my state.

We can never offer enough words to heal the grieving families all across our country who have lost their sons and daughters, their brothers and sisters, and their fathers and mothers to gun violence.

But what we can do—by voting to pass this legislation in the Senate—is to honor their memory.

Not just with condolences and hopes and prayers, but with concrete action.

I encourage all of my colleagues to support the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. 

Each life that we save by passing this legislation will mean literally everything to that person’s loved ones.

And that is what this is all about.