In a deeply divided America, an agreement to the congress between elected democrats and republicans is rare, all the more on this very divisive subject.
Le Monde with AP, AFP and Reuters
After the Senate Thursday, the House of Representatives approved, Friday, June 24, a set of measures establishing new limitations on arms and devoting some $ 13 billion to mental health and safety in schools. The text should be promulgated in the process by the President of the United States, Democrat Joe Biden.
The text was adopted – under the applause – by 234 votes against 193: no democrat opposed it and 14 elected Republicans approved it, governing the instructions of their chief, Kevin McCarthy. Thursday, he was voted in the Senate by 65 votes – including 15 Republicans, including the chief of the Republican minority, Mitch McConnell – against 33.
“We have adopted the first marking law in thirty years on arms security,” said the head of majority in the Senate, Democrat Chuck Schumer, congratulating that the upper room has done ” thought impossible a few weeks ago. ” Mr. McConnell had estimated that this law would make the United States safer “without [the] country being less free”. Immediately the text revealed, the National Rifle Association (NRA), the powerful weapons lobby, had expressed its opposition to the text, judging on the contrary that it could be used to “restrict the purchases of legal weapons”.
This is the first time since 1994 that a law strengthens the control of firearms, whose possession and the port are protected by the 2 e amendment of the constitution, passes the multiple obstacles systematically opposed to this type of legislation by NRA and weapons manufacturers.
This vote comes in the day after the Supreme Court’s decision to authorize Americans to get out of their homes with a handgun, which marks an important victory for defenders of firearms in a deeply divided country on the Subject and regularly bereaved by murderous shootings.
series of killings
In a deeply divided America, an agreement to the congress between elected democrats and republicans is rare, all the more on this very divisive subject. The text is the fruit of bipartisan negotiations started at the congress following the shock caused in public opinion by the murder of ten African-Americans in a supermarket in Buffalo, in New York State, and nineteen children and two teachers in a school in Uvalde, in Texas.
The text notably highlights the support of laws, State by State, which would make it possible to withdraw from the hands of people deemed dangerous the weapons they have. He also wants to strengthen the verification of the judicial and psychological history for weapons buyers aged 18 to 21 and establish better control of the illegal weapons sale and the financing of programs devoted to mental health. But the proposed measures remain very far from what Mr. Biden wanted, as the ban on assault rifles.
The attraction of Americans for firearms cannot be denied. In the United States, weapons manufacturers have produced more than 139 million for the past twenty years (including 11.3 million for the year 2020), according to a Ministry of justice published Le May 17 .