The American President, Joe Biden, signed this Saturday the law approved by Congress on the control of firearmsthe most important in this matter in almost 30 years but far from the demands of social organizations and the president himself.
“While this law does not cover everything I want, it does include measures that I have called for for a long time and that will save lives,” said the Democrat at the White House before flying to Israel and Europe to participate in the G7 and NATO summits. .
The rule, backed by Democratic and Republican legislators and which was approved on Friday to the applause of Congress, introduces new gun restrictions and spends billions of dollars on mental health and school safety.
The parliamentary initiative was launched after two massacres that occurred in May: that of an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, in which 21 people were killed, including 19 children, and that of a supermarket in Buffalo, in the state of New York, in which 10 black people were killed.
The text aims to strengthen criminal and psychological background checks for gun buyers aged 18 to 21 and establish better control of the illegal sale of weapons and the financing of programs dedicated to mental health.
Biden also intended to ban assault rifles, the AFP news agency reported.
Referring to the difficulty of passing legislation on such a sensitive issue in a divided Congress, the president called the new legislation “monumental.”
The message from the victims of the shooting, he said, was “‘do something (…), for God’s sake, do something.’ Well, today we did something.” “I know there is still a lot of work to do and I will never give up,” she added.
The powerful National Rifle Association and many Republicans in both houses of Congress opposed it, but the initiative had the support of groups that work on police issues, domestic violence and mental illness.
The last major federal gun control legislation was passed in 1994 creating a national background check system and banning the civilian manufacture of assault rifles and high-capacity ammunition magazines.
But that law expired a decade later and since then there has been no serious movement for reform despite the rise in gun violence.
