Raskin introduces bill to restrict federal contracts with ‘bad apple gun sellers’

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) has introduced legislation aimed at preventing “bad apple gun dealers” from getting involved in federal contracts.

The gun safety bill, titled Clean Firearms Acquisition Act, would require the attorney general to identify and make public a list of firearms that are “consistently and dramatically overrepresented” in crimes and violent crimes, according to the bill. The attorney general would then prohibit federal departments and agencies from initiating contracts with dealers in the listed firearms.

Data collected by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) would be used to identify firearms commonly attributed to criminal activity, Raskin’s office told The Hill. The ATF requires federally licensed firearms dealers to report when they sell 25 or more guns in a single year that are linked to violent crimes within three years after the firearms were sold.

“The federal government should not award lucrative federal contracts to bad-apple gun dealers who consistently sell firearms to people who use them in violent crimes or transfer them to people who use them in violent crimes,” Raskin said in a statement on Thursday. .

Raskin introduced the bill last week, while Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) will introduce companion legislation in the Senate in the coming weeks, Padilla’s office confirmed.

“Our commonsense legislation aims to combat senseless and preventable gun violence by ensuring gun dealers follow responsible business practices to prevent guns from falling into the wrong hands,” Padilla said.

Raskin, the senior Democrat on the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, is a longtime supporter of stricter gun violence laws.

Raskin led a roundtable with other House Democrats last November, where lawmakers highlighted the extent of gun violence in the country and examined proposals to curb epidemic levels of violence.

The roundtable came on the heels of a mass shooting in Maine last year that left 18 people dead.

There have been 232 mass shootings so far this year, according to data from the Gun Violence Archive. The highest number of mass shootings in the US happened in 2021, with 689 mass shootings reported, according to the data.

This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story