Statement attributable to:
Ryan D. Mire, MD, FACP
President, ACP
WASHINGTON June 27, 2022 – ACP applauds the enactment by Congress of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which President Biden signed into law on Saturday, June 25, 2022. For the first time in decades, Congress acted to reduce the horrendous toll of injuries and deaths from gun violence. By enhancing background checks, eliminating the “boyfriend exception” from background checks for domestic abusers in a recent relationship, providing funding for “red flag” laws and other crisis intervention programs, strengthening penalties for straw purchases, registering more high-volume firearms dealers, and increasing funding for mental health care and training of mental health clinicians, can begin to reduce the toll of injuries and deaths by firearms. We will continue to urge federal, state and local policymakers to enact additional needed measures that we know from the evidence will save lives.
For more than two decades, ACP has called for common-sense policies that would help reduce the number of injuries and deaths stemming from firearms. In 2019, ACP joined with 41 other leading organizations in a joint call-to-action that called for evidence-based solutions to mitigate firearms violence. We are pleased that many of the proposals included in our most recent policy paper on firearms violence prevention are also policies contained in the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act.
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About the American College of Physicians
The American College of Physicians is the largest medical specialty organization in the United States with members in more than 145 countries worldwide. ACP membership includes 161,000 internal medicine physicians (internists), related subspecialists, and medical students. Internal medicine physicians are specialists who apply scientific knowledge and clinical expertise to the diagnosis, treatment, and compassionate care of adults across the spectrum from health to complex illness. Follow ACP on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
Contact: Laura Baldwin, (215) 351-2668, lbaldwin@acponline.org