After nearly a decade and hundreds of school and mass casualty shootings since our own Sandy Hook tragedy, many Newtown residents may have uttered a collective “it’s about time” last weekend as they heard news about a Republican Senate compromise that will hopefully, finally deliver new federal gun safety legislation.

We recall US Senator Chris Murphy visiting The Newtown Bee offices just days after 12/14 robbed our community of 20 beautiful children and 6 educators, where he viewed some of the newspaper’s images from early in that horrific incident. As we thanked Murphy for his immediate concern and responsiveness, we left him with a plea: do everything possible to ensure a heartbreaking attack like the one in Sandy Hook never happens to another community.

On June 12 — 9½ years, and the infuriating, preventable loss of many, many more lives later — Murphy, his colleague Senator Richard Blumenthal, and a group of other senate bargainers announced a bipartisan response that came in the wake of last month’s school shootings in Uvalde, Texas.

This development was noteworthy, however, it only provides a limited breakthrough offering modest gun curbs and moderately stepped up efforts to improve school safety and mental health supports.

Murphy appeared in Hartford last Sunday, laying out the framework of this historic and important, but as far as this newspaper is concerned, ultimately unsatisfying proposal. With a nod to Blumenthal, Murphy noted the legislation would deliver “major federal funding to build out red flag laws all across this country that will allow courts and police departments to temporarily take firearms away from people who present a danger to themselves or to others.”

The senate compromise also is designed to close the egregious “boyfriend” loophole in current law that allows for men who are convicted of assault against their girlfriends to continue to buy weapons. Murphy and his senate colleagues from both sides of the aisle also tentatively agreed to put a pause on sales to buyers under age 21, to not only initiate a cooling down period but also to perform more rigorous background checking including a call to local police to ensure there are no flags before selling a weapon to a younger buyer.

The legislation may also create a new federal criminal prohibition on gun trafficking and straw purchasing, and an update to the definition of federal firearms dealer to make sure everyone engaged in the repeated for-profit sale of firearms is performing background checks.

Murphy also outlined how the senate compromise would spend billions on mental health treatment, especially for vulnerable communities.

We heartily agree with our senators that this compromise is significant, that it has the potential to save lives, and will provide the push to build momentum toward future, further changes and more comprehensive, common sense, gun laws that somewhere near eight out of every ten Americans agree our nation requires.

But we also concur with Murphy that this first step will not quickly end the epidemic of gun violence, it will not ban assault weapons or raise the age of legal purchase to 21, and it does not mandate universal background checks.

It is also critical that Newtowners and all Americans keep this initiative in crisp focus as final negotiations play out, since some of these modest proposals may get even further diluted, or may not even end up in the final bill.

While we may celebrate the breakage of a nearly decade-long political logjam over common sense federal gun legislation, these latest developments appear to be designed as passable, but most certainly not laudable.