“Do it now. It’s enough ! Joe Biden adopted an offensive tone on Tuesday, March 14, to convey his message to Congress on the need to legislate to limit the circulation of firearms in the United States.
The Democratic president, who came to the Asian community of Monterey Park, California, bereaved by a recent shooting in a dance hall, announced a new round of regulatory measures to reduce gun violence, but he also recalled that it was up to parliamentarians to impose real restrictions on the shootings that punctuate the life of the country. States have jurisdiction over the purchase, ownership and possession of firearms. Only a federal law could be imposed on them.
” Let’s be clear. None of this absolves Congress of its responsibility,” he said, after presenting the final executive orders.
He called on the divided Parliament – ??with a Senate in Democratic hands but a House of Representatives dominated by the Republican opposition – to impose systematic background checks on gun purchases, to remove protections for gun manufacturers. weapons in the face of the risk of complaints, and above all to ban assault rifles.
But his appeal is highly unlikely to be heard: Conservatives, staunch supporters of the constitutional right to own guns, indeed oppose any significant legislative tightening in a country believed to have some 393 million civilian firearms to 331.9 million inhabitants.
Already more than 8,400 gun deaths since January 1
Joe Biden spoke of the eleven victims who fell in Monterey Park on January 21, under the bullets of a septuagenarian, making sure to personalize his evocation. He recalled, for example, the memory of a 62-year-old woman who liked to “play cards” and “share the vegetables from her garden with her neighbors and friends”. Or the memory of a 72-year-old man with an “infectious smile” and “died protecting his rider. Joe Biden was greeted when he got off the plane in Los Angeles, among others by Brandon Tsay, who had managed to disarm the Monterey Park shooter as he was about to attack a second dance hall.
The White House previously announced new regulatory measures to strengthen background checks for gun purchases at the fringe. The executive also wants to encourage the use of reports of potentially violent individuals, whom the justice system can then deprive of firearms, and deal with the explosion in the number of weapons declared as “stolen” or “lost” during their transport between merchants – i.e. 250% between 2018 and 2022.
Joe Biden also wants to step up the pressure on the powerful gun industry. It also “encourages” the Federal Trade Agency, an independent body, to publish a report on the sale and promotion of firearms to minors.
According to the Gun Violence Archive count, more than 8,400 people have died from firearms since the beginning of the year in the United States, more than half of them by suicide. The same site recorded, over the same period, 110 shootings that injured or killed at least four people – not including the shooter.
