Rep. Mike Thompson reintroduces gun background checks bill

Resuming a highly personal charge that has spanned a decade, Rep. Mike Thompson has reintroduced a bipartisan bill that seeks to establish universal background checks for firearms sales.

Thompson, D-St. Helena, who is co-sponsoring the legislation this year with Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pennsylvania, has spent 10 years fighting to pass the Bipartisan Background Checks Act following the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in 2012.

The bill bans private transfer or exchange of a firearm unless a licensed gun dealer, manufacturer or importer takes possession of the gun to conduct a background check. The bill includes some exceptions including for loans or gifts between family members, use at shooting ranges and temporary transfers to prevent death or harm.

In past sessions of Congress, the bill has cleared the House but failed to advance out of the Senate.

This year, Thompson, a Vietnam War combat veteran, hunter, gun owner and House Democrats’ point man on gun violence prevention, said he is more hopeful about the chances in the Senate, where the partisan breakdown means it now will only need support from nine Republicans and the 51 Democrats to bring it to a vote.

Any path forward in the GOP-controlled House is less clear.

“Because of the little action that was taken on gun violence prevention there have been more people killed by people using guns, there’s been more suicides by people using guns, there's been more accidental deaths with people using guns, and there's been more mass shootings than there was when we sent this bill over the last time,” Thompson said. “So I'm hoping that will make a difference and that the Senate will bring the (bill) up for a vote.”

The bill’s reintroduction, announced Wednesday, follows three mass shootings in California in January that claimed the lives of 19 people.

Fitzpatrick called the background checks bill “common sense reforms,” in a Wednesday news release.

“This bipartisan legislation will prevent felons, domestic abusers, and dangerously mentally ill citizens from obtaining a firearm, while protecting the constitutional rights of law-abiding Americans,” Fitzpatrick said.

Gun violence prevention has become a cornerstone of Thompson’s work.

Chair of the House Gun Violence Prevention Task Force, Thompson also is championing legislation to create an active shooter alert system, which would operate similarly to the Amber Alert or Nixle notification programs by informing people in a certain geographical area of an active shooting.

Notification systems already exist for local law enforcement agencies to use, but Thompson said there is a need for a specific and uniform active shooter alert.

“They have message delays and low enrollment, and what this bill does, it creates a specific network for law enforcement to be able to get that done, to get the active shooter information out through the different systems that are available,” Thompson said.

He pointed to a fatal mass shooting in Brooklyn in 2022 and another in Atlanta in 2021 as examples where police were searching for the shooter for several hours and needed to communicate with the public.

“They tell us the same thing,” Thompson said. “That they didn't have a good spot, a good way to let people know. And there's just countless other examples.”

The bill passed the House last year in July and went to the Senate where it languished.

“If we get this bill up and out for a vote hopefully, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle won't play games with it, and they’ll pass it as it should be and get it over to the Senate,” said Thompson.

You can reach Staff Writer Emma Murphy at 707-521-5228 or emma.murphy@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @MurphReports.