Biden vows again to ban assault rifles
The US president has again called for a ban on assault rifles at a ceremony commemorating the victims of gun violence in Washington.
Joe Biden hugs a survivor of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting ten years ago during the 10th Annual National Vigil for All Victims of Gun Violence at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Washington DC, on December 7, 2022.
AFP
Recalling that the United States had banned semi-automatic weapons between 1994 and 2004, the American president said: “It worked”, “a significant number of lives were saved.” “We can do it again,” the 80-year-old Democrat said in a sorrowful address at the tenth annual “National Vigil for All Victims of Gun Violence” at St Mark’s Episcopal Church in Washington.
Recalling that he too had experienced bereavement – the death of his first wife and their still-baby daughter in December 1972, then the death of his eldest son Beau Biden in May 2015 – Joe Biden described, as he said. already done, the feeling of a “black hole opening up in your chest and sucking you in”. After expressing his admiration for the relatives and friends of the victims, as well as the survivors who surrounded him, he invited the audience to observe a moment of silence.
More than 600 mass shootings in 2022
American news is punctuated by attacks with firearms which spare no activity of daily life, ranging from schools to places of worship to supermarkets, but of which only the most deadly or the most heinous are still one. According to the Gun Violence Archive, more than 600 mass shootings (at least four people killed or injured) have taken place in the United States since the beginning of the current year.
Joe Biden has passed regulatory measures at the margins by decree. But the majority of Republican lawmakers and the powerful gun lobby, the National Rifle Association (NRA), oppose any truly binding legislation, arguing that it would be unconstitutional.
26 people, including 20 children between the ages of 6 and 7, were killed by a shooter armed with an assault rifle in 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown (Connecticut, northeast).
AFP
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