President Joe Biden of the United States has called on Congress to approve legislation to reduce gun violence in the country, in an emotional speech broadcast live on national television, a week after 19 children were shot dead by a shooter in their school.
Joe Biden offered many bills, including an assault weapons prohibition that was allowed to expire in 2004 due to a Republican government.
Additional ideas included a limitation on high-capacity magazines, secure storage legislation, “red flag” laws, universal background checks, and the repeal of gun-maker protection laws.
From the White House, Biden added, “It’s time to act.” “For the children we have lost. For the children we can save. For the nation we love. Let’s meet the moment. It’s time to act .”
Following a string of mass shootings around the country in the last three weeks, in which individuals with weapons massacred Black people in Buffalo, kids in Uvalde, and physicians in Tulsa, Biden delivered an emotional address that was televised during primetime in the United States.
While he did not anticipate Republicans to agree to a ban on assault rifles, Jason Nichols, a social and political analyst at the University of Maryland, told Al Jazeera that the November polls would persuade them to consider some of Biden’s other suggestions.
“Of course we have our kitchen table issues,” he continued, “but the most fundamental thing is life and if we are not doing everything we can to protect life, I think the American people will turn on their politicians, particularly the Republican politicians who have been blocking this year after year.” “I’m encouraged that that will motivate Republicans to make a move on this.”
The House of Representatives is now under Democratic control, while the Senate is divided, with each party controlling 50 members.
To escape the filibuster, any legislation would need the support of ten Republican Senators in order to pass.
The National Rifle Association (NRA), a powerful lobbying group that provides financial support to some politicians, said in a statement in response to Biden’s speech that the president’s proposals were not the kind of “functional measures and real solutions” that would reduce crime and help those with “dangerous behavioural health issues.”
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“All that the President repeatedly proposes will only infringe on the rights of those law-abiding (people) who have never, and will never, commit a crime,” the NRA stated. “This isn’t a real solution, it isn’t true leadership and it isn’t what America needs.”
Even after tragic mass shootings like the death of 20 young children at a primary school in Sandy Hook, Connecticut in 2012, Republicans and some Democrats have rejected stricter gun regulations.
Even watered-down plans to enhance federal background checks for people buying guns failed to clear the Republican-controlled Senate, despite the fact that the assault shook the nation and first looked to be the horror that would galvanize action on gun control.
SOURCE: ALJAZEERA
