Joe Biden signs bipartisan law to regulate firearms

First modification: 06/25/2022 – 18:07

Although it falls short of Joe Biden’s ambitions, the US president signed the most important gun control legislation in nearly three decades on Saturday, June 25.

“Although this legislation does not include everything I want, it does include measures that I have long called for and that will save lives,” he said at the White House before flying to Europe.

The legislation, backed by members of the Democratic and Republican parties, was approved by Congress on Friday to applause, and by senators on Thursday.

Introduces new limits on guns and spends billions of dollars on mental health and school safety.

The initiative was launched after the Uvalde massacre, in which 21 people, including 19 children, were killed at a Texas elementary school in late May; and the massacre in Buffalo, New York, in which 10 African-Americans died in a supermarket in mid-May.

Better control of illegal arms sales

The bill will strengthen criminal and psychological background checks on gun buyers between the ages of 18 and 21, and introduce greater control of illegal gun sales and funding for mental health programs.

But the proposed measures are far from what President Biden wanted, such as the ban on assault rifles, present in the deadliest shootings in recent weeks in the North American nation.

The text is, however, the first in decades.

Referring to the difficulty of passing legislation on such a sensitive issue in the United States in a divided Congress, President Biden called the new legislation “monumental.”

The message from the victims of the shootings was “do something (…), damn it, do something”. “Well, we did something today,” she said.

“I know there is still a lot of work to do and I will never give up,” he promised.

*With AFP; adapted from its French version