“We have to do something this time” about weapons: “it’s not about snatching someone’s weapons or defaming those who have weapons legally” but “how many other carnage are we willing to accept?”. The president of the United States, Joe Biden, said this, addressing the nation after yet another mass shooting since the beginning of 2022.
Biden urged Congress to speed up on stricter gun control laws, a design opposed by the Republican right and the industry lobby. The existing protections for the arms industry are “outrageous, they must end,” the president said, calling Republicans “unconscious” who hinder any debate in the Senate. In the Italian night, shortly after Biden’s words, other violence took place in Iowa: two women were shot and killed in Iowa, in the parking lot of a church, by a man who then took off his life.
The debate on “gun control” and the mirage of a stricter law
The debate on the gun control, gun control, flared up again with the escalation of shootings and casualties in the first half of the year. Only among the latest episodes are the massacre in a Texas elementary school, where an 18-year-old killed 19 pupils and two teachers, and the blitz of a gunman in a hospital in Tulsa, Oklahoma: an initial report speaks of several wounded and five victims, including the bomber himself. Guns, Biden recalled, “are the number one killer of children in the US” in the face of road accidents.
The intervention of the White House comes in the midst of bipartisan negotiations between the Senators for a – slight – change to the rules on the possession of firearms. The Republicans, who control half of the upper house, maintain a hard core of representatives hostile to any tweaks to “freedom to defend oneself.” It is unlikely that the tug-of-war will lead to a radical reform or, at least, to a text that will tighten the criteria for access to the purchase of weapons. AP writes that senators could converge on a milder package to increase federal funding for school safety and mental health measures. Among the hypotheses there is also that of a system of “red flags” to prevent access to weapons to those who are deemed dangerous or in any case unsuitable for their management.
