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The new legislation, which seeks to control the carrying of weapons on US territory, allow the delivery of resources for mental health and school safety, wants to establish a series of “red flags” to prevent new mass shooting massacres and regulate who and under what conditions access self-defense weapons.
It is the most ambitious gun violence bill in the last 30 years. This Friday, June 24, the United States House of Representatives sent the US President, Joe Biden, the legislation that was approved by the Senate last Thursday and that now only needs the signature of the head of state to enter into force.
After weeks of confrontations and divided opinions by Democrats and conservatives around the carrying of weapons, the project, a bipartisan initiative, reaches the hands of Biden after being approved with votes in favor of the 50 Democratic senators and 15 Republicans on Thursday; and that of 234 congressmen this Friday.
Between applause and hugs, the legislators celebrated the approval as a triumph on the outskirts of the US Congress.
“Last night, a strong bipartisan vote in the Senate moved legislation forward for the first time in three decades. I tell my colleagues that while it is not all that we would have liked to see in the legislation, it takes us down the path of more safety by saving lives. Let’s not judge the legislation for what it doesn’t do, but respect it for what it does,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
The announcement comes just after the US Supreme Court struck down an old New York state law that prohibited the carrying of weapons in public spaces, ruling that American citizens have “a fundamental right to carry firearms in public in self-defense.
US Supreme Court ruled that its citizens can carry firearms in public
However, the measure comes in direct response to the massacre in Uvalde, Texas, in which a young man with a gun shot up an educational institution and killed 19 children. A tragedy that mourned the country and that happened just days after another shooting in New York in which 10 people were killed, most of them Afro-descendants in what the authorities described as a racial and discriminatory attack.
“Every day 30 people are killed by someone using a gun. And if you add in suicides and accidental deaths, that number goes up to 100 people every day. And we all know how terrible these mass shootings are. They seem to be weekly, the tragic lives that are lost in these mass shootings and these individual shootings every day. We want to do something about it. The American people want us to do something about it. And today we’re going to pass legislation that saves lives,” said Rep. Mike Thompson.
What will the new law regulate?
Lawmakers put restrictions on paper such as a ban on assault weapons and background checks for all gun deals in general.
It plans to provide psychological assistance to people whose mental health the authorities consider to be compromised and to deploy an entire security restructuring operation in most of the country’s institutions.
Changes that some organizations do not fully share, such as the National Rifle Association, which its contributors have repeatedly assured will “defend your second amendment right to own guns” as self-defense.
With Reuters and AP
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