Could the tragedy change gun control? US President Joe Biden called Tuesday for a ban on the type of semi-automatic rifle used in the assassination attempt on Donald Trump on Saturday. “Help me get these weapons of war off the streets of America. An AR-15 was used in the shooting of Donald Trump… It’s time to get them off the streets,” the Democrat said at a campaign rally in Las Vegas.
Thomas Matthew Crooks, the assassination attempt on Donald Trump in Pennsylvania over the weekend, used an AR-15 assault rifle, according to the New York Times, citing security sources.
Implicated in several mass shootings committed in recent years in the United States, this weapon is “a semi-automatic assault rifle derived from the M16, the basic weapon of the American forces used since the Vietnam War,” a police officer specializing in the protection of personalities explained to Le Parisien. According to unofficial figures, more than 20 million Americans own this weapon, sold from 400 dollars in its basic version.
One in three Americans owns a gun
Joe Biden has promised to fight for better gun control, but he is facing opposition from conservatives, fierce defenders of the constitutional right to own guns, who oppose any significant legislative tightening. However, his administration had succeeded in September in passing a strengthening of the regulation of the firearms trade to require sellers to check the criminal and psychological backgrounds of their buyers.
The United States has more guns than people, partly because Americans have easy access to them. One in three adults owns at least one gun, and nearly one in two adults lives in a household with a gun.
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