The president warns that everyday places have become the new fields of carnage
Uvalde’s families asked him to try it, and Joe Biden did, albeit without much confidence. “Erase the invisible lines that divide this nation. Suggest something to fix what isn’t working and make the necessary changes so that it doesn’t happen again,” the grandmother of one of the children who died in Uvalde told him in a letter. she gave him Sunday in the Church of the Sacred Heart.
He did not lack the opportunity to deliver the speech which he immediately began to weave. The Tulsa, Oklahoma massacre, in which a frustrated patient killed four people before committing suicide, meant he couldn’t wait any longer to address the nation last night. By his count, there had already been about twenty mass shootings, 22 by the Gun Violence Files. “For God’s sake, how much more carnage are we willing to accept?” he asked.
It wasn’t about preaching to believers, as Republicans accuse him, convinced Democrats only intend to mobilize their bases for November’s parliamentary election. The president targeted the consciences of “responsible gun owners” by first assuring them that he has no intention of taking them away from them. What he is proposing, he emphasized, are “common sense” measures that many of them defend. Like extending to gun shows and private sales the requirement to test the buyer’s criminal and mental history against the FBI’s grassroots support, something supported by 83% of voters, including 77% of Republicans, according to a poll. from Morning Consult for Politician. In other words, a more popular measure than the aid plan to mitigate the effects of Covid.
Still, that couldn’t have prevented the massacres that have made headlines in recent times because those who committed them had no record. That’s why Biden was more ambitious in reviving the assault weapons ban, such as the AR-15 used Tuesday by the Tulsa hospital shooter, the frustrated teenager from Uvalde last week, or the week before by the supermarket young racist. in buffalo. “Why the hell does anyone need high-capacity cartridge belts that can fire hundreds of bullets in minutes?” he asked.
The ban on these, along with assault rifles and a total of nine categories of weapons, was part of the law passed in 1994 with the support of former Presidents Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter. Since it ended in 2004, the number of fatalities from mass shootings has tripled, although its impact on common crime was minimal when used in 1% of crimes, according to data from the National Rifle Association (NRA). “And if we can’t approve it, we should at least be able to raise the legal age to acquire it to 21,” he suggested. That would have left the gunmen in Buffalo and Uvalde waiting three more years and perhaps the chance that they would never commit a massacre, because the president’s plan also includes a psychological help package.
Another of his proposals, a “red flag” law, would ban the sale of weapons to deranged individuals who show signs of using them against themselves or others. However, the young man from Buffalo didn’t let that stop him, despite the fact that New York is one of the states that already has it. Payton Gendron was given a psychiatric evaluation last year after he made a threat at his high school, but no further action was taken as it was deemed too generic.
The president warned that everyday places have become the killing fields of these massacres. Churches, supermarkets, cinemas, schools, shopping centers, offices… No one is safe. Everyday places are ‘the new battlefields’. However, six months before the midterm elections, the new attempt to restrict access to firearms will most likely be a dead letter, as no lawmaker wants to risk losing even one vote. Biden also incensed those he was trying to appease by asking for the legal responsibility of gun manufacturers, as was done with tobacco companies, and the personal responsibility of those who don’t keep their guns under lock and key. As if that weren’t enough, by saying the Second Amendment to the Constitution is “not absolute,” he alerted everyone that the powerful National Rifle Association has feared the possibility that Democrats will restrict it.
“This time we have to do something,” the president pleaded. “This is not about taking away anyone’s rights, it’s about protecting our children and our families. To protect our freedom to send them to school, to the market or to mass without being killed».
Source: La Verdad
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