There remain some issues with the Senate's gun safety deal hashed out between 10 Republicans and 10 Democrats, according to Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas.
The bill might be slimmed down, and Cornyn is "starting to get a little concerned" about "a couple of issues that need to be settled before we can reach an agreement," calling the impasse "a lift" to get over.
"At some point, if we can't get to 60 then we're going to have to pare some of this," Cornyn told reporters Wednesday morning, The Hill reported.
"We've got to settle these issues or else we're talking about jeopardizing the whole deal."
Wednesday will feature a "critical meeting" over the sticking points of the package, he added.
"We've got to get 60 votes for whatever it is we do, so that is always a factor," Cornyn told reporters, according to The Hill. "Obviously, my goal is to get much more than 60 votes, but we're meeting this afternoon. I think it's going to be a critical meeting to try to figure out exactly where we're stuck and where we can unstick."
The top issues in question include whether to withhold federal funds to states that do not have red flag laws, but they might have other programs to prevent people from possessing guns. Red flag laws in some states permit courts to declare some Americans too dangerous to the community to have guns.
The other issue is how to definite personal relationships in closing the "boyfriend loophole." Dating partners who have been convicted of domestic abuse misdemeanors are not banned from owning a firearm.
Democrats "want to expand that definition, and I'm begging them to come up with something that I can get my arms and head around," Cornyn said on that second issue.
After Sunday's framework was announced on "an agreed set of principles," Cornyn noted, "coming up with text is harder."
"Sometimes when people use the same word they mean it differently or people hear it differently, so getting it in writing is critical," Cornyn added.
"We need something very clear, and so far we haven't gotten it."
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., Cornyn's counterpart across the aisle, expressed confidence the issues will be overcome.
"I think we have more issues than that and they're all overcome-able," he told The Hill.
"There's always going to be some polite disagreements over how that turns into text."
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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