By KEVIN FREK­ING | AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

WASH­ING­TON (AP) — The House ap­proved a “red flag” bill Thurs­day that would al­low fam­i­lies, po­lice and oth­ers to ask fed­er­al courts to or­der the re­moval of firearms from peo­ple at ex­treme risk of harm­ing them­selves or oth­ers.

It’s the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic-con­trolled cham­ber’s lat­est re­sponse to U.S. mass shoot­ings and like­ly stands lit­tle chance in the Sen­ate.

Nine­teen states and the Dis­trict of Co­lum­bia cur­rent­ly have such “red flag” laws. Un­der the House bill, a judge could is­sue an or­der to tem­porar­i­ly re­move and store the firearms un­til a hear­ing can be held, up to two weeks lat­er, to de­ter­mine whether the firearms should be re­turned or kept for a spe­cif­ic pe­ri­od. The bill passed on a most­ly par­ty-line vote of 224-202.

“We are painful­ly aware that we can­not do enough to save every life, and there is no one an­swer that will solve this prob­lem,” said Rep. Jer­rold Nadler, the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic chair­man of the House Ju­di­cia­ry Com­mit­tee. “But we do know that tak­ing guns out of the hands of peo­ple who pose a dan­ger to them­selves, or oth­ers, would save count­less lives.”

The vote came af­ter an emo­tion­al week that saw con­gres­sion­al tes­ti­mo­ny from vic­tims of re­cent mass shoot­ings in Uvalde, Texas, and Buf­fa­lo, New York, and came ahead of a planned march Sat­ur­day in Wash­ing­ton by groups ad­vo­cat­ing stronger gun con­trols.

On Wednes­day the House passed a wide-rang­ing gun con­trol bill that would raise the age lim­it for pur­chas­ing a se­mi-au­to­mat­ic ri­fle and pro­hib­it the sale of am­mu­ni­tion mag­a­zines with a ca­pac­i­ty of more than 15 rounds. It too, has vir­tu­al­ly no chance in the Sen­ate.

House Re­pub­li­cans crit­i­cized the “red flag” bill as giv­ing the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment the abil­i­ty to take a law-abid­ing per­son’s guns with­out them hav­ing the abil­i­ty to con­test it be­fore­hand.

“It would al­low the courts to take guns away from peo­ple with­out no­tice and with­out even the right to ap­pear in the hear­ing to de­fend them­selves in court,” said Rep. Mike John­son, R-La.

The Con­gres­sion­al Bud­get Of­fice projects that the bill would lead to rough­ly 10,000 emer­gency pe­ti­tions be­ing filed an­nu­al­ly with the courts.

The bill would al­so cre­ate a grant pro­gram at the U.S. De­part­ment of Jus­tice to en­cour­age states to adopt “red flag” laws and sup­port the 19 states that have al­ready im­ple­ment­ed them.

Five Re­pub­li­can law­mak­ers vot­ed for the bill: Reps. Bri­an Fitz­patrick of Penn­syl­va­nia, An­tho­ny Gon­za­lez of Ohio, Chris Ja­cobs of New York, Adam Kinzinger of Illi­nois and Fred Up­ton of Michi­gan. On­ly Fitz­patrick is seek­ing re-elec­tion. Rep. Jared Gold­en of Maine was the on­ly De­mo­c­ra­t­ic mem­ber to vote no.

The lead spon­sors of the bill were De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Reps. Salud Car­ba­jal of Cal­i­for­nia and Lucy Mc­Bath of Geor­gia, whose son, Jor­dan Davis, was slain at a Jack­sonville, Flori­da gas sta­tion in 2012 by a white man an­gry over the loud mu­sic the Black teenag­er and his friends had been play­ing in their car.

Pres­i­dent Joe Biden strong­ly sup­ports the bill. The White House said it would “make sig­nif­i­cant progress to­ward keep­ing guns out of dan­ger­ous hands.” How­ev­er, the leg­is­la­tion is un­like­ly to ad­vance in the Sen­ate, where at least 10 Re­pub­li­can sen­a­tors would be need­ed.

In­stead, sen­a­tors are fo­cus­ing on in­cre­men­tal pol­i­cy changes through a sys­tem that would send funds and oth­er in­cen­tives to states to bol­ster se­cu­ri­ty at school cam­pus­es, pro­vide more men­tal health ser­vices to young peo­ple and pos­si­bly en­cour­age states to pur­sue red-flag laws of their own.

Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, who is lead­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions on the Re­pub­li­can side, said one fo­cus is on en­hanc­ing the back­ground check sys­tem known as NICS, to in­clude young buy­ers’ crim­i­nal records be­fore they turned 18.

“Adding ju­ve­nile records to the NICS sys­tem is a com­mon-sense way to en­sure we have a com­plete pic­ture of the buy­er’s his­to­ry,” Cornyn said.

He voiced op­ti­mism that sen­a­tors will be able to reach an agree­ment.

“Around here, if there’s a will, there is a way, and I be­lieve we do have the will and we will find the way,” Cornyn said.

House Speak­er Nan­cy Pelosi, D-Calif.., said the House stands ready to con­sid­er a gun bill from the Sen­ate “if it’s life-sav­ing and can make a dif­fer­ence.”

But she cau­tioned: “We can­not have sub­terfuge. We can’t have them say well, it’s about this and it’s about that. No, it’s about guns.”