Gun Policy

Few issues divide Congress as cleanly as guns, and few break down into as tidy a set of recorded positions. Ask where a member stands and the answer almost always maps onto a short list of specific bills, each one a familiar proposal that returns, in nearly the same form, Congress after Congress.

The bills sort into two directions. One set would add rules to who can buy a gun, how it must be stored, and what may be sold. The other would loosen federal rules and expand the right to carry. A member's cosponsorships across the list place them along that line more honestly than any label.

On the restriction side, the recurring proposals are a background check on nearly every sale, a safe-storage standard for homes with children, a higher minimum age to buy certain long guns, and a ban on the semiautomatic firearms and large magazines the bill defines as assault weapons. Each is a distinct step, and a member can back some without backing the rest.

The sharpest single contrast on the list is over red-flag laws. One bill would fund a court process to temporarily take firearms from a person a judge finds dangerous; another would cut federal money to any state that adopts such a law. They are the same question answered in opposite directions, and both are live this Congress.

On the gun-rights side, two proposals recur. One would force every state to honor concealed-carry permits from all the others, the measure that has traveled furthest this Congress. The other would strip suppressors from the federal registry that now tracks them.

None of these bills is endorsed here. Most sit in committee without a floor vote, so where a member stands is read from whether they put their name on the bill. They are chosen because together they map the real range of what Congress is weighing, and because each cosponsorship is a documented fact you can check yourself in the record linked below.