Under pressure to act after the appalling massacre in Texas, elected members of the American Congress were busy Thursday to find a compromise on a limited framework for firearms, with a slim hope of success.
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Since the beginning of the week, while Uvalde is burying some of the 19 children killed in the horrific shooting, a group of senators — 4 Republicans and 5 Democrats — have been holding daily discussions, looking for any breakthrough on this subject. very sensitive.
A long-time defender of better arms control, Joe Biden will once again urge Congress to legislate during a speech at 7:30 p.m. (2330 GMT).
The American president had promised during his campaign to act against this scourge that successive governments have so far been powerless to stem.
But the narrow majority of his party in Congress does not allow him to pass such legislation alone.
After Sandy Hook
The whole challenge is therefore to find measures that could obtain the approval of ten Republican senators, essential because of the qualified majority in the Senate.
In a country where more than 30% of adults own at least one firearm, the Conservatives strongly oppose any measure that could violate the rights of “law-abiding citizens”, a phrase they use looped on television sets.
The discussions in the Senate therefore revolve for the moment around limited measures, such as the verification of the criminal or psychological background of purchasers of individual weapons, which associations have been calling for for years.
They are piloted by Senator Chris Murphy, State Representative of Connecticut, forever marked by the Sandy Hook shooting when a 20-year-old man had killed 26 people, including twenty children.
A few hours after this tragedy, on December 14, 2012, the then President Barack Obama had already implored Congress in tears to “take serious action to prevent further tragedies”.
But the bills introduced by elected officials were opposed by the very powerful arms lobby, the National Rifle Association, and were defeated a few months later.
Since then, virtually nothing has changed, except for local measures taken by cities or states. And a certain form of cynicism has begun to win over the citizen movements which denounce the recurring killings in schools, places of worship, or in hospitals, like the one in Tulsa on Wednesday.
“Rapid progress”
But could the current negotiations in the Senate succeed where others have failed?
“There is a growing momentum for us to get something done,” Senator Chris Murphy said on Twitter. “And we agreed on a plan to keep working.”
Republican Senator Susan Collins also reported “rapid progress toward a common-sense package that could have support from Democrats and Republicans alike.”
At the same time, elected members of the House of Representatives interrupted a ten-day break in their constituency to debate a major bill which would, among other things, ban the sale of semi-automatic rifles to those under 21 and high-speed magazines. ability.
The measures, which could pass the House next week, have been called “inefficient”, “reckless” and “un-American” by a group of Republicans. And it seems impossible that they can be adopted as they stand in the Senate.
