US Congress passes law to limit gun violence

< /p> UPDATE DAY

The U.S. Congress on Friday passed to applause a law backed by members of both parties that aims to implement gun control, the largest in nearly 30 years, but one that remains far short of what President Joe Biden wanted in a country plagued by shootings. 

After the Senate on Thursday, the House of Representatives approved a package of measures establishing new limitations on weapons and devoting billions of dollars to mental health and school safety.

The parliamentary initiative was launched after the massacre of Uvalde, which left 21 dead, including 19 children in a Texas elementary school at the end of May, and that of Buffalo in the State of New York, during which 10 black people were killed in a supermarket in mid-May.

The text notably highlights support for laws, state by state, which would make it possible to remove the weapons they possess from the hands of people deemed dangerous.

He also wants to strengthen criminal and psychological background checks for gun buyers between the ages of 18 and 21 and introduce better control of the illegal sale of guns, and the funding of programs dedicated to mental health.

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But the proposed measures remain very far from what President Biden wanted, such as a ban on assault rifles.

After a series of deadly shootings, the text is still a first for decades.

Rare Accord

In a deeply divided America, an agreement in Congress between elected Democrats and Republicans is indeed rare, all the more so on this very divisive subject.

Among the Republican elected officials in the House, 14 overstepped the instructions by their leader Kevin McCarthy to vote in favor of the bill. 

The vote came the day after the Supreme Court – whose majority of justices are conservative – invalidated the “restrictions” the carrying of weapons provided for since 1913 by a law of the State of New York.

The long-awaited ruling clearly affirmed for the first time that Americans have the right to carry guns outside their homes.

Thursday, in response to the passing of the Violence Act by firearms, Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said he was pleased that the upper house had “done something that many thought was impossible just a few weeks ago: we passed the first landmark law in thirty years on the weapons security.” 

His Republican counterpart Mitch McConnell said the law would make the United States safer “without making our country less free.”

As soon as the text unveiled, the NRA, the powerful arms lobby, had expressed its opposition to the text, judging on the contrary that it could be used to “restrict the purchase of legal weapons”.

The project “ leaves too much leeway to state officials and also contains indefinite and overly general provisions neral, inviting interference in our constitutional freedoms,” she said in a statement.