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President Donald Trump on Monday (August 5th) condemned the racist ideology of white supremacism, suspected of being at work in one of the two shootings that plunged the United States this weekend, while avoiding putting the focus on the fight against firearms.
In an intervention from the White House, Donald Trump preferred to insist on the harmful role that he believes would play in the radicalization of people suffering from mental disorders. He also described as " crimes against humanity " the two attacks that fueled the litany of tragedies due to individual weapons in a country where they abound.
" Our nation must condemn racism, sectarianism, and white supremacism with one voice, " the US president said in a short televised address. He was speaking after a white man Saturday killed 21 people in a hypermarket in El Paso, a Texas city with a strong Hispanic majority. Another gunman, unknown for the moment, killed nine people in Ohio on Sunday.
Donald Trump also called for the " fast " execution of the perpetrators of these shootings. " I also order the Ministry of Justice to propose a law guaranteeing that those who commit hate crimes and mass killings are punishable by the death penalty and that the death penalty is implemented quickly, decisively and without delay. years of unnecessary delay , "he said.
" We must stop the idealization of violence in our society, " he insisted, saying it was " too easy today for troubled youth to surround themselves with a culture celebrating violence " , especially through video games according to him " atrocious and sinister ".
The influence of mental illnesses or video games in triggering carnage by firearms is questioned by many experts. Epidemiologists believe that the vast majority of people with mental disorders are not violent.
In several tweets, Donald Trump called Monday morning for a better background check of people wishing to buy firearms, but also to couple this measure to " migration reform urgently needed ."
(With AFP)
► ANALYSIS
Three questions to Didier Combeau, political scientist specializing in the United States, associate researcher at the Institute of the Americas, author of "American Fonts" (Gallimard, 2018).
Why after every mass killings in the United States does the arms legislation evolve towards more control ?
The political answer can not come, first because the federal government does not have the authority to regulate weapons. The regulation of the detention and the port depends on the federated States, so the laws are different in all the States, more or less liberal, because they are never very strict. All the federal government can do is regulate trade. This is not enough to kill the proliferation of weapons. The bills that are on the table are about the state of public opinion. If we ask the public whether they are in favor of firearms regulation, two-thirds of Americans say yes. If, on the other hand, they are asked whether they are in favor of banning certain weapons, such as handguns, pistols or revolvers, which are the most dangerous weapons, that is about a third of Americans say in favor of a ban. So the bills try to save the goat and the cabbage, to some extent to allow the right to arms while trying to prohibit access to weapons to categories of people that would be considered dangerous.
For example with a psychiatric and forensic background check, which already exists for new weapons ?
The bill that is on the table right now is to extend this control of psychiatric and judicial history to the sale of used weapons. That said, these background checks are very difficult to carry out, because the FBI, which is responsible for conducting them, has too few files, again because of the federal structure of the country. And then when the candidate to buy a weapon is very young, it is difficult to have a criminal record. It can be the first serious occurrence of a psychiatric problem. Finally, for there to be a psychiatric history, it is necessary that the persons were interned automatically by a decision of justice. So the case has to be very serious in some way. So this is not enough to prevent shootings by people with psychiatric problems.
The killing of El Paso, where the police examine the trail of racism, is treated as a case of " domestic terrorism ," announced federal justice. Can mass killings as terrorist acts advance the debate on the regulation of weapons ?
The essence of terrorism in the United States is domestic terrorism. These are problems related to immigration and racism, it can be problems of attacks of clinics that perform abortions, it can be animal advocates who attack restaurants. But talking about terrorism is always double-edged, remember that Donald Trump said that if the people who were at the Bataclan were armed, they could have stopped the shooting more quickly. So talking about terrorism can also be a lever to say that honest citizens must be armed so that we can defend ourselves against terrorist attacks that can happen anytime and anywhere. When we talk about self-defense, on this side of the Atlantic we imagine a desire to defend his possessions or his family against the winds and tides of the general interest. While in the United States, it is not quite that. Being armed and being able to fight crime and delinquency is part of a kind of civic engagement. In the United States, the police are not conceived as in France, as an emanation of the State. It is considered in the United States that the police are people who are paid to do a job that belongs to every citizen. That is why it is very difficult to regulate firearms. Because at the same time we consider that an honest citizen with a weapon is something positive.
Interview by Nicolas Sanders