After the deadliest mass shooting in our nation’s modern history — the murder of 49 people at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando — Congress is debating how to prevent future tragedies while respecting the Second Amendment rights of responsible people.
And once again, our own U.S. Sen. Susan Collins is serving as a steady voice for responsibility and bipartisan solutions. Her balanced, common-sense approach is worthy of our support.
One of the dangerous gaps in our laws is that we are too vulnerable to the threat of active shooter terrorism. Under current law, known and suspected terrorists who are deemed too dangerous to board a plane can legally purchase guns at any federally licensed firearms dealer.
The consequences are clear: Since 2004, known or suspected terrorists have attempted to purchase guns or explosives from licensed gun dealers more than 2,200 times, according to a 2016 report from the Government Accountability Office. They successfully obtained weapons 91 percent of the time. The sales, by the way, take place without any requirement to notify the FBI, our leading counterterrorism agency.
Now the Senate is rightfully debating ways to close this irresponsible “terror gap” in our gun laws — a step first proposed by the administration of President George W. Bush. Soon after the tragedy, each party in the Senate put forth competing proposals, and the sides quickly retreated to their ideological corners. Working with U.S. Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-North Dakota, Collins quickly helped craft a bipartisan compromise that forges a badly needed middle path towards responsible change.
Collins’ plan now before the Senate would prevent suspected terrorists on two lists, the No-Fly List (just what it sounds like) and the Selectee List (passengers marked for extra scrutiny at the TSA checkpoints), from legally buying guns by giving authority to the U.S. attorney general to block attempted gun purchases.
The bill also provides critical protections for due process of law, creating a process for Americans and green card holders to appeal a denial before a federal court. It also gives law enforcement flexibility to allow a sale to proceed if it is part of a larger counterterrorism investigation.
This kind of approach is nothing new for Collins. Her record on fighting gun violence through bipartisan change is clear: At every step, she’s sought to bring the parties together, and supported solutions that protect our rights and communities. Is it the perfect, seamless solution? Of course not. Is it an important step in the right direction? Absolutely.
In April 2013, just months after 20 children were gunned down in their classrooms at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Collins stood up for common sense and stood up to the Washington gun lobby when she supported a bipartisan compromise to close loopholes in our background check laws. Like me, Collins recognized it doesn’t make a lot of sense that we would give a felon or domestic abuser the option of buying a gun without a background check here in Maine — or anywhere.
Unfortunately, a minority of senators in the grip of the gun lobby or rigidly ideological purists blocked that bipartisan bill.
Collins knows two important things that drive her reasonable approach to the gun debate. The first is that with our freedom to own guns comes responsibility, and part of being responsible means supporting basic steps to keep guns out of those who can’t be trusted with them. When I was a young boy, NRA instructors taught me marksmanship. They also drilled us on personal responsibility, how to safely handle weapons, a deep respect for their power — the same kind of common-sense thinking at the heart of Collins’ bill.
Gun violence is a complicated problem, and no single piece of legislation can prevent every dangerous person from getting a gun. But we must do more to prevent, slow down or mitigate those lethal steps — like giving our law enforcement officials the tools to block gun sales to terror suspects.
This is just the kind of common-sense, bipartisan progress that we need to break the Washington gridlock.
Chet Lunner of Cape Elizabeth is a retired senior intelligence executive from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.