A bipartisan group of senators say they have a framework for gun safety legislation and aim to pass a bill by early July.
David Hogg, a Parkland shooting survivor and co-founder of March For Our Lives, told Boston Public Radio on Friday the deal would be the first real step toward meaningful gun control taken in his lifetime.
"It's a minor deal, and it's a first step, but it's more than what's happened in my life, plus ten or so years," said Hogg.
Hogg highlighted the growing popularity for gun reforms among Americans across the political spectrum.
"The most divided people in our country are not in the 50 red, blue and purple states, they're the 100 senators who have continued to do nothing about this issue for 30 years on Capitol Hill," he said.
Hogg said the gun safety and control movement shouldn't look to places like Australia for its model, given the sheer proliferation of guns in America. Instead, he said to look within the country's own boundaries.
"If every state had the laws that Massachusetts has and the corresponding gun death rate, we could probably halve gun deaths in less than a decade, if we really showed up at our state legislatures," he said.
Hogg and March For Our Lives have been trying to bring so-called responsible gun owners into the movement for gun control. ”There's not a single gun owner that wants people who abuse animals or abuses their spouse to have a gun," Hogg said.
But one of the main barriers he sees to being able to put any sustained pressure on uncompromising gun supporters comes down to money.
"The bigger problem is that we don't have a multibillion-dollar industry backing us the way the gun lobby does," he said. "We need to learn some lessons from the conservative movement, frankly. We need to learn the value of investing for the long term, and being OK with not seeing results immediately, and knowing it's a compounding interest we're aiming for here."
Negotiations continue on details related to at least two issues in the pending legislation: the red flag laws that allow authorities to remove guns temporarily from people deemed by a court to be a threat to themselves or others, and the so-called "boyfriend loophole" that allows convicted domestic abusers to buy guns if they aren't married.
Hogg said a red flag provision kept his own mother safe when she received a death threat.
"We used the law we created in the wake of Parkland to disarm that individual through a court order with a right to due process, because he lived less than an hour from us and had several guns and a ton of ammunition," he said. "These laws work."
