Three years after the high school massacre in Parkland, Florida, which left 17 people dead on February 14, 2018, US President Joe Biden on Sunday called on Congress to mobilize to limit the flow of firearms in the United States.
“This administration will not wait for the next mass shooting” to hear the calls for action, said the Democratic president in a statement marking the anniversary of the attack. “Today I call on Congress to enact common sense reforms regarding weapons”Joe Biden said, asking to impose background checks on buyers “For all arms sales”, to ban assault rifles and high capacity magazines.
Need Republicans to change the laws
“We will enact these laws and other laws that will save lives”, Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House of Representatives, said immediately, promising to“To bring about the advances that the people of Parkland and the American people demand and deserve”.
Democrats now also hold a very narrow majority in the Senate, but they will need at least ten Republicans to pass these laws, which currently seems difficult. For Joe Biden, it is necessary “End the immunity of arms manufacturers who knowingly put weapons of war on our streets”.
In 2018, on Valentine’s Day, a 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz opened fire at this Southeast Florida facility, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, killing 14 high school students and 3 supervisors before d ‘to be arrested. Excluded from school the previous year for “Disciplinary reasons”, he had been able to legally obtain a semi-automatic assault rifle despite a psychiatric history.
Despite an unprecedented mobilization of high school students in Parkland for stricter control of arms sales, President Donald Trump then refused to consider banning assault rifles. Successive American administrations have been powerless to stem the increase in mass killings that regularly strike American schools, shopping malls, businesses or places of worship.
Elected officials, such as Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, responded to the President, saying instead, “That we must come back to the ban on weapons in school zones”.
