Nineteen children aged 7 to 10 and two adults died in their school in Uvalde, Texas (United States), shot dead by an 18-year-old gunman on Tuesday May 24, ten days after a racist killing in a supermarket in New York State. This new drama brings to light the painful question of the deadly attachment of a part of the United States and certain political representatives to firearms.
“QWhen, for God’s sake, are we going to face the gun lobby?” launched on the very evening of the killing US President Joe Biden, who expressed the wish to “turning pain into action”. But the American president has not put any concrete reform on the table. And Republicans have shown no sign of being open to any restrictions.
To understand the blockages of American society and the probability of overcoming them, franceinfo interviewed Lauric Henneton, specialist in American society and lecturer in American civilization at Versailles-Saint-Quentin University.
Franceinfo: After this massacre with a particularly heavy toll, Joe Biden promised to act and confront the arms lobby. What could be the measures put on the table?
Lauric Henneton: They are somewhat always the same, which can be summed up in two main points. First, reducing access to automatic weapons. The right to bear arms is constitutionally protected, but there is a difference between a small caliber and a large automatic rifle. And secondly, establishing more background checks [les vérifications sur le profil et les antécédents de l’acheteur d’une arme]. These are not a panacea either. In the case of Texas, the shooter had just turned 18, and he has no prior history, neither legal nor psychiatric, which could have prevented him from obtaining a weapon. There will always be holes in the racket. In contrast, a ban on assault rifles might have deprived him of the ones he used, which otherwise do more damage than a handgun.
Does Joe Biden really have the will and the power to introduce these measures?
Joe Biden is one of the politicians who had a ringside seat in the 2012 Sandy Hook shootings [26 personnes avaient été tuées dans une école primaire, dont 20 enfants]. He was vice-president and he tried, at the time, to pass laws for a more ambitious regulation of the carrying of weapons. It did not work. One can imagine that, for him, a frustration has accumulated on this subject, and that his emotion is real. But it is lost in advance.
We know that the House of Representatives will be able to vote on a certain number of provisions. But in the Senate, not only Republicans will not vote for them, but also some Democrats. When you are the elected Democrat of a state that votes mainly for Donald Trump, your voters are in favor of bearing arms.
The problem is that the Democrats do not really have a majority [ils disposent de 50 sièges, comme les républicains, mais en cas d’égalité lors d’un vote, c’est la vice-présidente Kamala Harris qui tranche].
“On issues as divisive as the carrying of arms, a majority of 60 seats is needed to override filibuster, a blocking technique that allows Republicans to obstruct the passage of laws.”
Lauric Henneton, specialist in American societyat franceinfo
Why do Republicans oppose gun restrictions, and what do they propose to end mass shootings?
There is such a polarization in the United States on cultural issues – guns are considered part of it, along with abortion, for example – that Republicans are terrified of the idea that their weapons. They are obsessed with state intervention in their lives. The historical basis of the Second Amendment of the American Constitution, which guarantees the right to carry a weapon, is to be able to be armed against the risk of tyranny of the central State. This is why, when the Democrats are elected, arms sales explode. And the number of killings too, because it is scientifically proven that the ratio of deaths by firearm is proportional to the number of weapons in circulation, whether they are killings, homicides or suicides.
The Republicans assume that nature is such that there will always be a “bad guy with a gun” and they are obsessed with the idea that you have to oppose it with a “good guy with a gun”. Their proposals to have more visible security forces around schools or to arm teachers are seen as a way to have more of these “good guys”, in a kind of cult of heroism and self-defense. . It’s a qa philosophical question, but also a practical one in certain sparsely populated areas where the police take some time to intervene, and whose inhabitants demand weapons to defend themselves if necessary.
However, polls show that voters, even Republicans, are in favor of strengthening certain measures, such as the extension of “background checks”, approved by 70% of Republicans against 90% of Democrats, according to a poll by the Pew Research Center (in English) in 2021. Why don’t politicians follow them?
For a long time, the National Rifle Association (NRA), the lobby of arms companies, generously financed candidacies, posing as a kind of intermediary between the voter and the candidate. However, it has lost a lot of its luster and its financial power, to the point of trying to declare itself bankrupt. Famous manufacturers like Remington have filed for bankruptcy. This seemed to weaken the pro-gun lobby and ecosystem.
But despite this, we do not really notice any shift in political discourse. It must be said that the repetition of very close elections means that there is never time for these ideas to take hold.
“We are still in a logic of crisis, fueled on the one hand by Democrats who hysterize the debate with sometimes unrealistic drastic restrictions and, on the other hand, Republicans who wave this threat to mobilize voters.
Lauric Henneton, specialist in American societyat franceinfo
This time, 21 people, including 19 children, were killed. The emotion caused by this killing will be particularly strong. Could it be a tipping point?
We want to believe it. But the Sandy Hook school shootings in 2012 showed that, after the emotion of the first days, things resume their course. To me, that suggests that Uvalde’s won’t have an impact either. What can play is the accumulation of killings, the fact that they are more and more numerous, and that the NRA is no longer able to finance electoral campaigns. The coming weeks will give us an indication of the possibility of a change.