Spurred by last month’s mass shootings in New York and Texas, the House Judiciary Committee met for an emergency hearing Thursday to approve a series of gun-control measures. 

The legislation, packaged together as the Protecting Our Kids Act, would be the first passed by Congress since 10 people were gunned down in a Buffalo, New York, supermarket on May 14 and 19 children and two teachers were shot dead at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, 10 days later.

Wednesday night brought yet another mass shooting, as a gunman killed four people at a Tulsa medical clinic before fatally shooting himself. All three shooters used AR-15-style semiautomatic rifles, police said.

The House proposals would raise the minimum age to purchase semiautomatic centerfire rifles from 18 to 21; make it illegal to sell, import, manufacture or possess most large-capacity magazines; ban straw purchases of guns; crack down on so-called “ghost guns” that lack serial numbers; build on the administration's executive action banning fast-action “bump-stock” devices; and establish requirements for storing firearms at homes.

The House panel approved the measure in a 25-19 vote on Thursday evening as President Joe Biden was delivering an address calling for Congress to take action on gun violence in the aftermath of the wave of recent mass shootings.

Committee Chairman Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., said he believes it’s long overdue for Congress to enact gun control measures that could help prevent future mass shootings.

“You say it's too soon to take action, that we are politicizing these tragedies to enact new policies,” Nadler said, directing his comments at Republicans. “It has been 23 years since Columbine, 15 years since Virginia Tech, 10 years since Sandy Hook, seven years since Charleston, four years since Parkland and Santa Fe and the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. It's been three years since El Paso. 

“It has been a week since we learned again that gun violence can reach any of our children and grandchildren at any time and that no number of armed guards can guarantee their safety. It has not even been 24 hours since the last mass shooting, and who knows how long until the next one. Too soon? My friends, what the hell are you waiting for?”

The full House could vote on the legislation as early as next week, but it’s unlikely to make its way to the Senate floor. A bipartisan group of senators is negotiating toward their own potential bill that might win enough support from Republicans in the 50-50 chamber.

House Democrats acknowledged that their bill would not prevent all mass shootings, but, Nadler said, “it will save some (lives). It might have saved those children in Uvalde.”

With a poster showing the faces of those killed at Robb Elementary behind her, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, said the country is “in a crisis of death. We have a war on the children of America.”

Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., argued the National Rifle Association has “too much of a grip on this Congress.”

“It needs to stop,” he said. “They’re in the business of representing gun manufacturers and selling guns and selling ammunition and not caring about what it does to innocent human beings. They don't care about children.”

GOP lawmakers accused Democrats of rushing the legislation and trying to infringe on Americans’ Second Amendment rights. 

Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the committee’s ranking Republican, described the bill and hearing as “more like political theater than a real attempt at improving public safety or finding solutions.”

“The bill won't make your school safer,” he said. “It will hamper the rights of law-abiding citizens, and it will do nothing to stop mass shootings. We need to get serious about understanding why this keeps happening.”

Republican Rep. Steve Chabot, also of Ohio, said lawmakers should instead focus on funding schools to make them more secure and identifying mental health issues in students. 

“The majority is simply acting quickly because they believe it's important to act quickly,” he said. “In doing so, I'm afraid they’re foregoing an opportunity to actually work together and hopefully produce a better piece of legislation.”

Democrats took exception to accusations they are rushing the legislation. According to The Washington Post, more than 311,000 students have experienced gun violence at school since the 1999 Columbine High School massacre in Colorado.

“Tell the parents who lost children, tell the family members who saw loved ones slaughtered that we're rushing,” said Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I. “The real question is, why has it taken us so long? There's one reason: We don't have Republican colleagues in the fight with us.”

Rep. Sylvia Garcia, D-Texas, accused Republicans of being “complicit” in a number of mass shootings by neglecting to enact gun reform and for promoting rhetoric that, in her opinion, fueled shootings targeting Blacks, immigrants and homosexuals. 

Rep. Madeleine Dean, D-Pa., said she was “stunned” by some of the comments from Republicans. 

“Where is their outrage over the slaughter of 19 fourth-graders and their two teachers?” she asked. “Why don't they feel an urgency to do something?”

Later in the hearing, a visibly angry Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, vented:  “How dare you think we don't have hearts!

“It's just that when we look at the things that you're doing and you're trying to do to America, we've seen the carnage,” he said. “I mean, for heaven's sake, let's take (for) example Democrats control the major cities that have the worst murder rates. That's right. Your ideas have been shown to get people killed.”

Republicans also argued that criminals will continue to ignore the laws and that gun-free schools are a recipe for disaster. 

“If you walk into any bank in this country, you will see at least one armed guard whose purpose is to protect our money with lethal force,” said Rep. Tom McClintock, D-Calif. “And yet in Uvalde and in so many other school shootings, we were not willing to protect our children with the same forces we protect our money.

“It was against both state and federal law to bring a firearm into the Robb Elementary School,” he added. “Every administrator, every teacher, every janitor obeyed that law. The only person who didn't was the man (the shooter) and that, in a nutshell, is the danger of gun control laws.”

Rep. Dan Bishop, R-N.C., argued there are legitimate Second Amendment questions about some of the Democrats’ proposals. 

“Isn't it incumbent on the House Judiciary Committee to consider, to evaluate what the Constitution allows Congress to do consistent with the supreme law of the land?” he asked.

“You are not going to bully your way into stripping Americans of fundamental rights,” Bishop added.

Any legislative response to the Uvalde and Buffalo shootings will have to get through the evenly divided Senate, where support from at least 10 Republicans would be needed to advance the measure to a final vote. 

In the Senate, talks on gun legislation are making “rapid progress,” according to Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, one of the Republican negotiators.

Ideas under discussion include expanding background checks for gun purchases and incentivizing red-flag laws that allow family members, school officials and others to go into court and secure orders requiring the police to seize guns from people considered threats to themselves or others.

The broader bipartisan group of almost 10 senators talked again Wednesday — “a very productive call,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., in an interview.

“There’s a tenor and tone, as well as real substantive discussion that seems different," he said.

Blumenthal has been working with a Republican member of the group, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, on a proposal to send resources to the states for red-flag laws. He said he was “excited and encouraged” by the response from the group.

“It really is time for our Republican colleagues to put up or shut up,” Blumenthal said. “We’ve been down this road before.”

President Joe Biden was asked Wednesday if he was confident Congress would take action on gun legislation.

“I served in Congress for 36 years. I’m never confident, totally," Biden said. “It depends, and I don’t know. I’ve not been in on the negotiations as they’re going on right now.”

On Thursday, a bipartisan group of mayors reissued an August 2019 letter that urged Senate leaders Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to act on two bills passed by the House that would strengthen gun background checks. 

“Quick passage of these bills is a critical step to reducing gun violence in our country,” the letter said.

The more than 250 mayors who signed the reissued letter include Republicans Francis Suarez of Miami, Mattie Parker of Fort Worth and David Holt of Oklahoma City, and Democrats Eric Adams of New York, Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles and Lori Lightfoot of Chicago.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.