The House Judiciary Committee is set to hold an emergency meeting Thursday to pen an extensive gun control package.
Democrats are currently pushing a series of eight bills aimed at suppressing gun ownership, referred to collectively as the “Protecting Our Kids Act,” Fox News confirmed.
The bills contain proposals raising the minimum age for purchasing a semi-automatic weapon from 18 to 21, a ban on “high capacity magazines,” a registry for bump stocks, and more.
The House will vote on some form of the package when they return to session next week.
The House package is expected to go nowhere in the Senate and is seen as more of a show vote, as a bipartisan group of senators tries to agree on a bill that could pass the Senate.
The gun control package is a direct response to the massacre in Uvalde, Texas – the elementary school shooting last week that left 19 children and two teachers dead.
The Uvalde shooting came immediately on the tails of a separate massacre in Buffalo, New York.
Payton Gendron, 18, invited around 30 people in a chatroom devoted to racism to read his White supremacist ramblings and then showed them his plans less than an hour before he went to Tops Supermarket and allegedly killed 10 Black people, according to The Buffalo News.
The two shootings have rattled the nation and left lawmakers and citizens desperate for measures to prevent further violence.
Democrats have made the shootings a flashpoint in the gun control debate, demanding immediate action to outlaw semi-automatic rifles and even handguns.
President Biden faced a new round of backlash on Twitter for his comments on gun control legislation and 9mm ammo on Memorial Day.
Speaking with reporters outside the White House, Biden told about his efforts to work on gun control legislation with Republicans in Congress following the deadly Uvalde school shooting. While Biden admitted that his executive options are limited, he suggested that 9mm bullets have no “rational basis” to be used for self-defense.
“The .22 caliber bullet will lodge in the lungs and we can get it out. A 9mm bullet blows the lung out of the body. The idea of a high caliber weapon, there is simply no rational basis for it in terms of self-protection, hunting,” Biden said.