 I'm about to sign a law, bipartisan safety legislation, gun safety legislation, and time is of the essence. Lives will be saved. When it seems impossible to get anything done in Washington, we are doing something consequential. We can reach compromise on guns. We ought to be able to reach compromise on other critical issues. The new gun law is not an inspiring example of bipartisan cooperation to protect public safety. It's an illustration of how the worst instincts of both major parties combine to produce policies that are neither just nor sensible. The bill passed the Senate by unanimous consent and passed the House with bipartisan support because it offered something to both sides. Republicans got tougher sentences, Democrats got more gun control, and both got to pretend they were doing something to prevent mass shootings. The law is unlikely to have a meaningful impact on mass shootings, but it will cancel the gun rights of adults based on juvenile records and subsidized state laws that suspend those rights without due process. It also increases the maximum penalty for gun possession by people with felony records from 10 to 15 years. That ban applies no matter how old the conviction is and regardless of whether the offense involved violence. The law created additional criminal penalties of up to 15 years in prison for trafficking in firearms, which is defined so broadly that it covers any prohibited person who receives a gun. Prohibited persons who are legally disqualified from owning firearms include millions of Americans with no history of violence, such as cannabis consumers, former psychiatric patients who have never been deemed a threat to others, and people convicted of drug crimes or other nonviolent felonies. Thanks to this law, a cannabis consumer could go to prison for up to 15 years if he obtains a gun, even if he lives in a state that is legalized marijuana. That trafficking in firearms penalty also applies to people who have lost the right to own guns under state law, even when they are not disqualified under federal law. These new penalties will disproportionately harm African Americans. Last fiscal year, 89% of federal firearm offenses involved illegal possession, often without aggravating circumstances or history of violence. 55% of those defendants were black. Even the American Civil Liberties Union, which thinks the right to keep and bear arms is a figment of the Supreme Court's imagination, recognizes that the categories of people that federal law currently prohibits from possessing or purchasing a gun are over-broad and not reasonably related to the state's interest in public safety. The ACLU says those gun bans raise significant equal protection and due process concerns. As an appeals court judge, Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett went even further, arguing that the wildly over-inclusive gun ban for people with felony records violates the Second Amendment. Undeterred by such criticism, Republicans who claim to support the Second Amendment, though did not only to continue punishing people for exercising the rights it guarantees, but to increase the penalties they face. So did Democrats, despite their avowed concern about excessively severe sentences, racial disparities and the damage done by the war on drugs. This is what bipartisan compromise means in Washington. I will compromise my principles if you compromise yours.