This is a first step towards a possible ban on certain lethal weapons in the United States. The US House of Representatives adopted Friday, July 29 the ban on assault rifles, semi-automatic weapons involved in several killings that have mourned the United States in recent months. The text, supported by Democratic President Joe Biden, was voted on at first reading with 217 votes in favor and 213 against.
Adoption in the Senate, on the other hand, seems highly unlikely: due to qualified majority rules in the upper house of Congress, ten Republican senators would have to vote with their 50 Democratic colleagues. This prospect is unlikely as the partisan divides are great on the subject of weapons: on Friday, only two Republican representatives joined their voices to those of the Democrats. Any member of the Republican Party who would vote with the Democrats to restrict access to guns “would automatically disqualify” within his camp, valued for example the Republican Lauren Boebert, member of Congress since 2021.
However, in 1994, Congress succeeded in passing a law banning assault rifles and certain high-capacity magazines for ten years. It expired in 2004 and since the sales of these weapons, promoted by the manufacturers as “sporting rifles”, flew away. Over the past ten years, they have brought in more than a billion dollars, according to a parliamentary report.
Any restrictions are seen by Republicans as a violation of the Constitution’s Second Amendment.
Massacres committed with AR-15 rifles at a Texas school (21 dead), a supermarket frequented by African-Americans (10 dead) and a National Day parade (7 dead) have recently renewed calls for ban them. After the bloodbath in the Uvalde school, Joe Biden had implored Congress to, at a minimum, raise the legal age to be able to buy them to 21.
On Friday, the White House reiterated its support for a measure that “would save lives”. “Forty thousand Americans die each year from gunshot wounds and firearms have become the number one killer of children in the United States”she recalled in a press release.
So far, Republicans are united against this measure, which they perceive as a violation of the second amendment to the Constitution on the right to bear arms. Pressed to act, they just agreed to support a very modest law that strengthens the means to seize the weapons of violent spouses, and increases the means for mental health and the safety of schools.