US President Joe Biden signed the gun control bill into law on Saturday. This is the most important piece of legislation in thirty years, but it falls far short of what a Democratic president wanted.
Although falling short of Joe Biden’s ambitions, the US president on Saturday, June 25, signed the most important gun control legislation in nearly three decades.
“While this legislation doesn’t include everything I want, it does include the measures I’ve long sought and the people’s rights,” he said at the White House before flying to Europe. Will save lives.”
The legislation, supported by members of the Democratic and Republican parties, was approved by Congress on Friday and by senators on Thursday to applause.
He introduces new gun limits and spends billions of dollars on mental health and school safety.
The initiative was launched after the Uvalde massacre, which killed 21 people, including 19 children, at a Texas elementary school in late May; and the Buffalo (New York) massacre, in which 10 African-Americans were killed in a supermarket in mid-May.
Better control over the sale of illegal weapons
The bill would strengthen criminal and psychiatric background checks for gun buyers between the ages of 18 and 21, and introduce more controls on illegal gun sales and funding for mental health programs.
But the proposed measures are a far cry from President Biden’s wishes, such as a ban on assault rifles, which are present in the deadliest shootings in recent weeks in the North American nation.
The text, however, is the first in decades.
Referring to the difficulty of passing legislation on such a sensitive issue in a divided Congress in the United States, President Biden called the new legislation “monumental”.
The message from the victims of the shootings was “Do something (…), damn it, do something.” “Well, we did something today,” he said.
“I know there is still a lot of work to do and I will never give up,” he vowed.
