U.S. President Joe Biden speaks about the recent mass shootings and urges Congress to pass laws to combat gun violence at the Cross Hall of the White House in Washington DC, June 2, 2022. SAUL LOEB AFP WASHINGTON - US President Joe Biden has urged Congress to take action on gun violence in a prime-time address from the White House.
He urged Congress to ban assault-style weapons and high-capacity magazines, or at least raise the purchasing age from 18 to 21. Among other proposals included expanding background checks, passing red flag laws and repealing the liability shield for gun manufacturers and dealers. The US was shaken by a series of mass shootings over the past few weeks, but the comments came after the US was shaken by a spate of mass shootings.
Biden traveled to Uvalde, Texas on Sunday to meet the families of victims and survivors of a school shooting on May 24, in which the gunman, killed by responding officers, used an AR-15 style rifle, a popular range of semiautomatic weapons to kill 19 children and two teachers.
The Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill are negotiating gun reform measures but it's not clear how much talk will be turned into action.
A committee in the House approved a package of gun control legislation along the party line, a response to the recent mass shootings, but US media considers it likely to die in the Senate, as The New York Times said, fierce Republican opposition highlighted the partisan animosity in the committee debate. ALSO READ: 10 killed in racially motivated shooting at US supermarket.
The House Judiciary Committee chairman Jim Jordan dismissed the package as partisan, according to CNN. No one wants another tragedy. No one wants this to happen again. That's why it's regretful that Democrats have rushed to a markup today in what seems like a political theater rather than a real attempt to improve public safety or find solutions, he said.
Republicans deem such measures, including restricting gun buyers' age and the sale of magazines, as unconstitutional and depriving Americans of the right to defend themselves. The New York Times reported that Representative Dan Bishop, Republican of North Carolina, said that you are not going to bully your way into stripping Americans of fundamental rights.
According to CNN, Representative Jamie Raskin, Democratic of Maryland, accused Republicans of misleading the American public about the Second Amendment. My colleagues are using the Second Amendment as a smokescreen to protect their opposition to any reasonable gun safety regulation, he said.
According to a survey of all 50 Republicans in the Senate by The New York Times, most Republicans who had responded declined to take a position or signaled they would oppose the measures, worrying about infringing on the rights of gun owners.
The United States has seen at least 233 mass shootings this year, with more than 18,000 deaths due to gun violence, according to the nonprofit organization Gun Violence Archive. A mass shooting is defined as one in which four or more people have been killed or wounded in a mass shooting, according to the definition of mass shooting.
The United States has more guns than any other nation in the world, and that number continues to grow each year.
There are estimated 400 million guns in the United States between police, military and American civilians, and more than 393 million of these guns are in civilian hands, the equivalent of 120 firearms per 100 citizens, according to a 2018 report on global firearms holdings by the Switzerland-based Small Arms Survey.