Global Courant
Exactly one year ago, President Joe Biden signed the first major piece of federal gun safety legislation in nearly three decades.
It was a good start, Biden said, but it didn’t go far enough.
On Friday, the Democratic president will speak at a Connecticut summit highlighting how the sweeping law has been implemented so far. He will also use it as a moment to push for universal background checks and the banning of so-called “assault weapons.” They are part of a 2024 political platform unthinkable to Democrats as recent as Barack Obama’s tenure.
The meeting is led by US Senator Chris Murphy, D-Conn., and major gun safety groups who hope to build on recent progress.
“We were actually wrong for a long time. We left an opportunity on the table for decades,” Murphy said of the push for gun safety legislation.
BIDENS PAYS RESPECT IN UVALDE AFTER MASS SCHOOL SHOOTING
Even before the Sandy Hook massacre in Murphy’s state in 2012 spurred him to action, there was a mythology surrounding Democratic election losses that haunted the party after passing a crime bill in the 1990s – that voters weren’t interested in gun safety and that was it also. politically a lost cause. “That was just a lie,” Murphy said. “But it was a lie that the gun lobby has done a great job, with some help from the Democrats.”
Last year’s law, signed just weeks after a mass shooting that killed 19 elementary school children and two teachers in Uvalde, tightened background checks for the youngest gun buyers, sought to bar firearms from domestic violence offenders and was designed to help states introduce red flag laws that make it easier for authorities to take guns from people deemed dangerous.
Success has been achieved: Intensified FBI background checks have blocked more than 200 transactions from attempted buyers under the age of 21. Prosecution of those selling firearms without a license doubled.
President Joe Biden and his wife, Jill Biden, visit a memorial at Robb Elementary School to pay their respects to the victims of the May 29, 2022 mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Millions of new dollars have flowed into mental health care for children and schools. On Friday, the Departments of Health and Human Services and Education sent a joint letter to governors highlighting the resources available to them to support mental health, particularly if a student has been affected by gun violence.
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“I think there’s no doubt about it, the passage was a turning point,” said John Feinblatt, head of Everytown for Gun Safety. The law “clearly broke a blockade.”
“What we’re really going to do is build on the current moment, both at the federal and state level,” he said.
But since the signing of that bill last summer, the number of mass shootings in the United States has only increased. According to a database maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today in conjunction with Northeastern University, there have been at least 26 mass murders in the U.S. so far in 2023, killing at least 131 people, not including perpetrators. .
That puts the country on a faster pace for mass killings than in any other year since 2006, according to the database, which defines a mass murder as one in which four or more people, not counting the perpetrator, are killed within a 24-hour period. period of time.
Firearms are the No. 1 killer of children in the US, with 85 children under the age of 11 killed by guns and 491 between the ages of 12 and 17 so far this year. As of 2020, the firearm death rate for those under the age of 19 is 5.6 per 100,000. The next comparison is Canada, with 0.08 deaths per 100,000.
“Too many schools, too many everyday places have become killing fields in communities across America. And in every place we hear the same message: ‘Do something. Just do something for God’s sake,'” Biden said on the anniversary of the Uvalde shooting. “We did something after that, but not nearly enough.”
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The president has said he wants to ban so-called “assault weapons,” a political term to describe weapons most commonly used in mass shootings that are capable of killing many people quickly. Still, the idea of further action — or unilateral action by the White House — makes some Republicans who voted for the 2022 gun legislation uneasy.
“I’m a little worried,” said R-Texas Senator John Cornyn. “I don’t want them to write a rule that is fundamentally different from what we negotiated or voted on.”
After his speech in West Hartford, Biden heads to a fundraiser in Tony Greenwich. In the coming days, he will speed up his campaign travel, making stops in New York, California, Illinois and Maryland before the end of the month.
