“
We can do it again
”: Joe Biden promised again on Wednesday December 7 to ban assault rifles, in a serious speech, during a ceremony commemorating in particular the massacre ten years ago. years, in the school of Sandy Hook.
Recalling that the United States had banned semi-automatic weapons between 1994 and 2004, the American president said: “
It worked
”, “
a significant number of lives were saved.
»
He was attending the tenth
annual National Vigil for All Victims of Gun Violence at
St Mark's Episcopal Church in Washington.
Recalling that he too had experienced bereavement - the death of his first wife and their still-baby daughter in December 1972, then the death of his eldest son Beau Biden in May 2015 - Joe Biden described, as he described it. already done, the sensation of a "
black hole opening up in your chest and sucking you in
".
Repeated shootings
After expressing his admiration for the relatives and friends of the victims, as well as the survivors who surrounded him, he invited the audience to observe a moment of silence.
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American news is punctuated by attacks with firearms which spare no activity of daily life, ranging from schools to places of worship to supermarkets, but of which only the most deadly or the most heinous are One again.
According to the Gun Violence Archive, more than 600 mass shootings (at least four people killed or injured) have taken place in the United States since the beginning of the current year.
Joe Biden has passed regulatory measures at the margins by decree.
But the majority of Republican lawmakers and the powerful gun lobby, the NRA, oppose any truly binding legislation, arguing it would be unconstitutional.
26 people, including 20 children between the ages of 6 and 7, were killed by a shooter armed with an assault rifle in 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown (Connecticut, northeast).
On June 2, Joe Biden had already called on the US Congress to "
ban
" the sale of semi-automatic assault rifles nationally.
"
How much more carnage are we willing to accept?"
, he then launched.
The United States had then faced three shootings: a supermarket in Buffalo on May 14, a school in Uvalde on May 24 and a hospital in Tulsa on June 1.