Congresswoman Lisa Blunt Rochester joined President Biden this week for the signing of new gun safety legislation heralded as a rare bipartisan compromise.
She says many of the reforms in the Safer Communities Act echo changes made in Delaware over the past decade. That includes providing funding for crisis intervention programs like Delaware’s red flag law, which enables judges to deem a person a threat to themselves or others so law enforcement can temporarily remove guns in their possession. Delaware adopted a red flag law in 2018, but this new bill allocates federal funding for state crisis intervention programs like Delaware’s.
“The other thing that we did in the federal law was to close the boyfriend loophole by adding convicted abusers to the national instant background check system," she said. "Again, Delaware has been a leader there.”
Moreover, the bill requires enhanced background checks for gun buyers between the ages of 18 to 21: a less-restrictive parallel to a recent Delaware bill prohibiting people younger than 21 from purchasing or possessing most firearms.
Blunt Rochester also pushed for $250 million in federal funding for community-based violence interruption programs, citing the success of Delaware efforts to reduce retaliatory gun violence with community-led de-escalation.
“In the past, there’s been about $50 million allocated for this," she said, "so this is about five times the amount we normally allocate for this, and I really think this will be a game-changer based on interventions we learned right here in Delaware.”
Other gun safety bills recently passed in Delaware’s - including bans on the sale of assault weapons and on the possession of high-capacity magazines – are poised to face court challenges after the US Supreme Court vacated lower court rulings upholding bans on high-capacity magazines and the sale of assault weapons California, New Jersey and Maryland, respectively. Those cases will now be reconsidered while gun control opponents challenge Delaware’s latest gun safety legislation in state court.
