By Jackie Rogers 

One year ago, Congress took an important step to protect our rights as well as our lives. In response to rising violence across the country, the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA) was passed and signed into law. The law effectively balances crucial Second Amendment protections with needed investments and safeguards to help mitigate the disturbing trends we’ve seen in violent crime since the pandemic. 

The negotiations that led to the BSCA came about after the horrific school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, which took the lives of 19 children and two teachers. While this was an individual event, it points to a troubling rise in murders and other types of violent crime in our country over the past few years. For example, CDC data shows that there was about a 30 percent increase in the murder rate in the U.S. between 2019 and 2020 and that murders continued to climb in 2021. 

Having spent my career in law enforcement, I’ve seen the devastating impact this trend is having on our friends and neighbors. So many parents are concerned about their children’s safety at school. No matter where you stand politically, this should be an unacceptable reality in the United States of America.  

Despite what many attention seekers on both sides of the political spectrum may claim, we don’t need to go to extremes or infringe upon anyone’s constitutional rights to fix these problems. The BSCA shows us this is true. First and foremost, the law is about fixing our nation’s broken mental health care system. It makes the largest investment in improving access to mental health care in our nation’s history. The law also makes obvious fixes like closing the “boyfriend loophole” to keep convicted domestic abusers away from firearms. For context, about half of the intimate partner homicides in the U.S. every year are committed by unmarried partners. 

The law also funds school-based mental health services and school safety resources to boost our capacity for early intervention and harden the security infrastructure at schools across our state. 

Our own U.S. Senator Thom Tillis was a leader in these negotiations, and he made sure that the rights of law-abiding gun owners were protected, instead focusing on keeping firearms out of the hands of dangerous criminals. As Senator Tillis made clear, "[it is] bipartisan legislation that improves mental health care, strengthens school safety, and saves lives while protecting the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding North Carolinians.”

He worked alongside his colleagues to ensure that the bill’s investments were meaningful and effective so that taxpayer dollars are being put towards programs with a real return on investment for public safety. 

The BSCA was a clear bipartisan triumph, showing what we can achieve as a country when we do the work to make our democracy function as intended. Throughout these negotiations, lawmakers balanced various interests to identify policy solutions that provide direct benefits to American schools, families, and communities. In the end, that will help accomplish the goal of making our society safer.  

Jackie Rogers serves as Sheriff of Lenoir County, North Carolina.