President Joe Biden has thrown his support behind the protesters.
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After emotion, mobilization. Shocked by recent killings, thousands of Americans gathered on Saturday June 12 in the streets of the country to demonstrate in favor of better supervision of firearms.
On May 24, an 18-year-old high school student carrying an assault rifle killed 19 schoolchildren and two female teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, near the Mexican border. A few days earlier, an 18-year-old white supremacist had killed ten black people in Buffalo, in the northeastern United States.
These latest massacres, and the hundreds of shootings that do not make the headlines, have prompted new calls to come together to demand better regulation of access to firearms. The movement has gained support from the White House: “I join them in reiterating my call to Congress: do something”, wrote US President Joe Biden on Twitter.
In New York, a long parade in which the mayor of the city was found wound through the streets of Brooklyn. In Washington, several hundred demonstrators gathered at the foot of the huge obelisk symbol of the American capital. On the lawn were installed thousands of vases with white and orange flowers, representing the increase in violence in the country since 2020, the year during which 45,222 people were killed by firearm, according to a tally carried out by Giffords, a association favorable to the supervision of weapons.
Joe Biden has repeatedly promised to act against this scourge that successive governments have been unable to stem. But in a country where nearly one in three adults owns at least one gun, conservatives strongly oppose any measures they believe violate human rights. “law-abiding citizens”.
The House of Representatives voted on Wednesday a text which would prohibit, among other things, the sale of semi-automatic rifles to those under 21 and that of high-capacity magazines. But he has almost no chance of passing the Senate, where the support of ten conservatives is necessary because of the rules of qualified majority.