Dylan Bettencourt
Following mass shootings in recent months in the United States, President Joe Biden signed a gun control bill.
The gun control bill imposes stricter checks on buyers under the age of 21 and encourages states to remove guns from people deemed a threat.
“While this bill doesn’t do everything I want, it does include actions I’ve long called for that are going to save lives,” Biden admitted.
In May, two high-profile mass shootings shocked the world and reinvigorated the debate over gun control. In Texas, 19 students and two teachers were shot dead when a lone shooter opened fire on an elementary school. Just a week earlier, a gunman thought to be targeting black people, shot dead 10 people in a shop in New York.
Biden has said that the relatives of those who lost their lives in mass shootings demanded the government take action.
“Well today we did,” Biden said.
The reforms signed into law include background checks on buyers younger than 21, R247-billion in funding for mental health programmes, and security upgrades at schools, as well as funding to remove guns from those deemed a threat.
Lastly, any person convicted of domestic abuse can no longer own a gun, applied to married and unmarried couples.
Biden was advocating to ban all assault weapons, or at least increase the age in which they could be purchased.
However, his efforts were unsuccessful.
The new gun control bill is the first time that reforms in this regard have been accepted by both Democrats and Republicans.
The Republican party has historically opposed the introduction of any legislation that would increase gun control laws.
Just this year alone, America has suffered 20,900 deaths due to gun violence, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
In 2020, gun-related killings made up 79% of all homicides in the country. Canada followed with 37%.
Image source: @NPR
