US senators reach bipartisan gun control deal after recent mass shootings

The proposed deal is a modest breakthrough offering measured gun curbs while bolstering efforts to improve school safety and mental health programs.

It falls far short of tougher steps long sought by Biden, many Democrats, gun reform advocates and America citizens. For example, there is no proposal to ban assault weapons, as activists had wanted, or to increase from 18 to 21 the age required to buy them.

Even so, if the accord leads to the enactment of legislation, it would signal a turn from years of gun massacres that have yielded little but stalemate in Congress.

The deal aims to make the juvenile records of gun buyers under age 21 available when they undergo background checks. The suspects who killed 10 people at a grocery store in Buffalo and 19 students and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde were both 18, and many of the attackers who have committed mass shootings in recent years have been young.

The agreement follows weeks of intense negotiations between the divided groups of senators, led by Chris Murphy of Connecticut on the Democratic side, and for the Republicans by John Cornyn of Texas.

Senate majority whip Dick Durbin expressed his blessing on social media.

The announcement came one day after thousands of people protested in numerous March for Our Lives events around the country on Saturday, calling for stronger gun laws.

David Hogg, a survivor of the 2018 deadly mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in Parkland, Florida, and co-founder of the movement, tweeted a photograph of himself celebrating with a giant milkshake.