The president, Joe Biden, insisted this Monday on the need for Congress to prohibit the sale of assault weapons, after the shooting with seven deaths in Half Moon Bay (San Francisco, California) on Monday and the one that cost the lives of 11 people the day before in Monterey Bay (Los Angeles, California).
California Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein presented a bill to veto these
military weapons
and also raise the age to buy a firearm to 21, according to the White House statement, which recalled that, during the 10 years in which While a similar ban was in effect (until 2004), mass shootings decreased in the United States.
The veto approved in 1994, when Biden was a senator, affected 19 types of weapons commonly used by the military, including semi-automatic rifles but also certain types of pistols, as well as chargers with more than 10 cartridges.
It expired in 2004 under pressure from the Republican Party and the National Rifle Association, and since then shootings have tripled, according to Biden.
The weapons with which the last two shootings in California were committed are not assault rifles like the ones the president hopes to veto, but they are illegal in that state and would be affected by the ban in Congress.
In Monterey Park, the killer (who took his own life after being tackled by police after hours of pursuit) used a 9mm caliber MAC-10 semi-automatic pistol with an extended magazine, which has been illegal in California for three decades.
He also had another Norinco semi-automatic pistol in his vehicle, which is legal in the state.
The shooter in San Francisco used a state-registered, legal semi-automatic pistol, according to California authorities.
[More mass shootings than days of the year in the United States: 37 only so far in 2023]
NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP via Getty Images
California is however an exception in its ban on the MAC-10, which can be purchased legally in most parts of the country.
This weapon looks like a compact version of a submachine gun but is considered semi-automatic.
James Densley, a professor of criminal justice at Minnesota Metropolitan State University, told the Los Angeles Times that the gun conjures up images of violent crime in the 1990s, but has rarely been used in mass shootings before.
The MAC-10 lacks the power of an AR-15, which fires rifle bullets that tend to cause more “catastrophic” injuries, added Thor Eells, a former Colorado Springs police SWAT task force commander and association director. National Tactical Officers, and is harder to target.
However, the assassin killed 11 people and injured 10 in a dance hall on Sunday.
[They record the moment in which a hero disarms the author of the shooting in Monterey Park]
Police officers detain a man, believed by law enforcement to be the suspect in the Half Moon Bay mass shooting, in Half Moon Bay, California, United States, January 23, 2023. Kati McHugh via REUTERS
California's gun violence rate is relatively low: according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) 8.5 out of 100,000 people were killed by a firearm in 2020, compared to a national average of 13.7.
California is one of only eight states, along with Washington DC, that ban assault weapons like the one used in the shooting, which are designed to kill efficiently, without requiring the shooter to reload frequently, according to Vox. .
California's ban went into effect in 1989 after the deaths of five children in a shooting at a Stockton elementary school.
But people who already owned these types of guns were able to keep them, so there's a chance the 72-year-old killer obtained the gun before the ban went into effect.
He also could have obtained the gun legally in another state.
According to the Proyecto Violencia database, the weapon of choice among mass shooters in recent years has been AR-15 rifles, used in a third of 66 attacks between 2012 and 2022.
