Washington, United States | AFP | Joe Biden signed on Saturday the law aimed at establishing the regulation of firearms, the most important in this area in almost 30 years, but which remains well below the aspirations of the US president.
“While this law does not cover everything I want, it does include measures that I have called for a long time and that will save lives,” Trump said at the White House before flying to Israel and Europe.
The rule, backed by Democratic and Republican lawmakers and passed to applause by Congress on Friday, introduces new restrictions on carrying guns and allocates billions of dollars to 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 died, including 19 children, and that of a supermarket in Buffalo, in the state of New York, in 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.
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 (…), damn it, 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.
