Twenty American senators, Democrats and Republicans, agreed this Sunday, for a better framework for the sale of firearms in the United States, less than three weeks after the killing of Uvalde which left 21 dead in a Texas school.
These measures, which require a supermajority to be approved in the Senate, include an encouragement for states to remove weapons from those deemed dangerous as well as others aimed at mental health and safety in schools, but do not include the essential to the reforms demanded by the Democrats and Joe Biden.
The President of the United States, however, immediately hailed the “insufficient but “significant progress”, believing that it would be “the most significant text on gun control to be voted on in Congress for decades”.
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The presence of ten Republican senators among the signatories of the press release announcing this compromise suggests that such a text has a real chance of passing the Senate if all 50 elected Democrats are in favor of it.
A qualified majority of 60 votes is required for such a bill to be adopted, which has so far blocked any major progress towards better regulation of firearms, due to opposition from the Conservatives.
This group of senators, led by Democrat Chris Murphy, has worked quietly in recent days to find an agreement that can be approved by Congress.
The twenty senators, ten Republicans and ten Democrats, agreed to "a common-sense, bipartisan proposal to protect America's children, keep our schools safe, and reduce the danger of violence across the country,” the joint statement read.
Their proposals also include stronger criminal and psychological background checks for gun buyers between the ages of 18 and 21 as well as federal funding for various mental health programs.
Senate Opposition
The Democratic-controlled US House of Representatives on Wednesday passed, for the second time in months, a set of security measures to be put in place for purchases.
In addition to the period of verification of criminal records for the purchase of a firearm, extended from three to ten days, the text plans to set at 21 the minimum age for the purchase of most semi-automatic rifles. and to prohibit high-capacity ammunition magazines.
But the United States Senate, dominated by Republicans, has so far always opposed limiting the sale of arms, considering, with the very powerful National Rifle Association (NRA), the lobby at the origin of the financing of many election campaigns, that restricting the right to bear arms would violate the Second Amendment to the US Constitution.
Thousands of people demonstrated on Saturday in the streets of many cities across the country, including Washington DC, to ask the upper house to agree to vote on concrete measures on the control of weapons.
“I join them in reiterating my call to Congress: do something,” wrote Joe Biden on Twitter.