On Sunday, US President Joe Biden called on Congress to take “immediate” action to limit the circulation of firearms in American society. He made the call to commemorate a shooting in a Florida high school, where exactly three years ago, seventeen people were shot dead by an ex-student.
“This administration will not wait for the next shooting” to answer calls to action, the US president said. ‘I call on Congress to enact common-sense reforms on weapons,’ he said.
Biden advocates, among other things, a mandatory background investigation of buyers and a ban on the sale of assault weapons and extra-large warehouses. He also works to end “the inviolability of arms manufacturers who knowingly put weapons of war on our streets”.
On Valentine’s Day 2018, a 19-year-old young man opened fire at a high school in Parkland, in the southeastern state of Florida. He killed seventeen people before he could be apprehended.
He had been thrown out of the school a year earlier for “disciplinary reasons” and was able to legally obtain a semi-automatic weapon even though he had a history of working in psychiatry.
The shooting led to large demonstrations against gun violence, with calls to tighten gun sales. Then-President Donald Trump refused to ban the sale of assault weapons. He did suggest, however, that teachers, for example, should be given a gun.
