President Biden rightly calls for an emergency bill banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines
Posted Date – Tuesday, 09 May 23 at 12:30pm
President Biden rightly calls for an emergency bill banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines
Mass shootings in the United States have acquired a numbing familiarity, evoking a sense of helplessness and frustration. Eight people were killed in the recent shooting at a popular shopping mall in the Dallas suburb of Allen, including Thatikonda Aishwarya, a young woman from Telangana state. As we mourn this tragedy, several troubling questions arise about America’s gun laws and why successive administrations have failed to address the elephant in the room. The latest killings come more than a week after a mass shooting in rural San Jacinto County, north of Houston, in which five people who lived with them were killed by a neighbor after he asked him to stop shooting in his front yard. They happened less than a year after the Uvaldi massacre, where two teachers also died. So far this year, at least 198 mass shootings have killed or injured four or more people, according to the Gun Violence Archive. President Joe Biden this time went beyond the usual, now-familiar proclamation of mourning the dead, calling for an emergency bill to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. Echoing common public perceptions of the gun threat, he rightly supports enacting universal background checks, requiring gun manufacturers to store them safely and ending waivers. Tighter gun control is what the vast majority of Americans want, yet successive administrations have failed to act. In general, Republicans strongly oppose gun control.
There were an estimated 390 million firearms in circulation in the United States in 2018. At 120.5 guns per 100 residents, the US far exceeds the rest of the world. Despite the intense public outrage over these senseless killings and the heated debate over gun laws, nothing major happened in a country where off-the-shelf military-grade weapons were cheaper and easier to buy than health insurance . Some states have taken steps to ban or strictly regulate the ownership of assault weapons. Laws vary by state, but California, for example, prohibits possession of assault weapons with a few exceptions. The National Rifle Association (NRA) remains the most powerful gun lobby in the United States, with a large budget to influence members of Congress on gun policy. The NRA and other groups have spent more on gun rights advocacy than rivals in the gun control lobby for the past several election cycles. For all the glory of liberty, democracy, equal opportunity, and liberal values, America’s best kept secret is the threat of mass shootings. People fail to understand why any legal system should allow deranged teenagers to purchase automatic weapons with little question. Such is the harsh reality in America, where the gun lobby has more clout than the health care industry.
