The United States Congress voted on Friday in first reading to ban assault rifles, semi-automatic weapons at the center of several murders that shocked the United States.
The text, supported by Democratic President Joe Biden, was adopted by the House of Representatives with 217 votes in favor and 213 against, but seems doomed to fail in the Senate.
Supermajority rules in the upper house of Congress would require 10 Republican senators to vote with their 50 Democratic colleagues to ban assault rifles.
This prospect is unlikely as partisan divisions run deep on the gun issue: Only two House Republicans on Friday joined their voices with those of the Democrats.
Recent murders revive the debate
However, in 1994, Congress was able to pass a law that banned assault rifles and certain high-capacity magazines for ten years.
It expired in 2004 and since then sales of these guns, promoted by manufacturers as “sports rifles,” have skyrocketed. In the last ten years, they have raised more than a billion dollars, according to a parliamentary report.
Massacres committed with AR-15 rifles at a Texas school (21 dead), a supermarket frequented by African-Americans (10 dead), and a National Day parade (7 dead) have recently renewed calls to ban them.
Following the bloodbath at the Uvalde school, Joe Biden had implored Congress to, at a minimum, raise the legal age to purchase them to 21.
“Save lifes”
On Friday, the White House reiterated its support for a measure that “would save lives.”
“40,000 Americans die each year from gunshot wounds, and firearms have become the number one killer of children in America,” he said in a statement.
So far, Republicans are united against this measure, which they perceive as a violation of the second amendment to the Constitution on the right to bear arms. Pressured to act, they have just agreed to support a very modest law that strengthens the means to seize guns from violent spouses and increases the means for mental health and school safety.
Source: BFM TV
