Sylvie Claire / December 15, 2022
Joe Biden said Wednesday, ten years after the Sandy Hook school shooting, that America has a "moral obligation" to regulate guns more, and that it should "feel guilty" for not doing so.
I am committed to banning assault rifles and high-capacity magazines," the U.S. president said in a statement, a move that the Republican Party has so far rejected.
"We must eliminate these weapons that have no other purpose than to kill in large numbers," he also wrote. "We can do this, not only for those innocent lives lost, but also for those survivors who still have hope.
"We should feel guilty for taking too long to address this issue. We have a moral obligation to pass and enforce laws that can prevent these things from happening again," said Biden, who said he was not sitting on his hands.
He recalls having passed a law supposed to prevent potentially dangerous people from obtaining weapons, and having taken decrees notably on the "ghost guns", which it is possible to manufacture at home with 3D printers.
On December 14, 2012, 26 people, including 20 children aged six to seven, were killed by an overarmed young man at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown (northeast).
The tragedy shook America and brought tears to the eyes of then President Barack Obama. But this emotion has not produced any really binding measures in a country where there are more weapons in circulation than inhabitants and where shootings are a daily occurrence.
Joe Biden has been promising for some time to reinstate a ban on assault rifles, the weapon used by the Sandy Hook killer.
But the Republican opposition and the powerful gun lobby, the NRA, do not want to see a return to the ban that was in place between 1994 and 2004. According to them, it would be contrary to the American Constitution.