Killing in the United States: faced with the arms lobby, politicians reduced to incantations
Donald Trump during his speech at the NRA's annual convention in Louisville on May 20.
REUTERS/John Sommers II
Text by: RFI Follow
3 mins
21 dead, including 19 children: this is the toll of the new mass killing in Texas.
One of the worst in a school since that of Sandy Hook in Connecticut in 2012, which had killed 28 people, including 20 children.
And as after Sandy Hook, the debate on weapons is resurfacing in the United States, where politicians are struggling to move the lines.
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With our correspondent in Miami
,
David Thomson
This debate on weapons, it was Joe Biden who relaunched it from the White House by speaking a few hours after the killing of Uvalde in Texas.
“When, for God's sake, are we going to face the gun lobby?
When for God's sake are we going to do what we know in our guts to do?
»
This subject, Joe Biden knows it well.
In 2012, after the
Sandy Hook massacre
, it was to him, then vice-president, that Barack Obama had entrusted the mission of reforming access to weapons in the United States.
A mission that ended in failure: in ten years, the United States has experienced 3,500 mass killings according to the Gun Violence Archive site, which lists them, including 900 in schools.
It should be noted that the anger of public opinion against the legislation on the carrying of weapons is short-lived, explains Jean-Éric Branaa, specialist in politics and American society at the University of Paris II Assas, in microphone by
Gregory Lesca
.
Jean-Éric Branaa "very ambivalent American public opinion"
UNITED STATES His Jean Eric Branaa "very ambivalent public opinion"
Ten years after Sandy Hook, Joe Biden, now president, is reduced to making the same calls to confront the arms lobby.
Like today after the killing of Uvalde in his message from the White House.
“
The idea of an 18-year-old kid walking into a gun shop and buying two assault rifles is just wrong.
For the love of God, why do you need an assault rifle except to kill someone
?
»
Gun law reform is a sea serpent that Conservatives do not want to hear about.
Many even go so far as to ask for more weapons.
The argument?
That of the "
good guy with a gun
".
Simply put, the best way to stop an armed shooter would be another armed shooter.
This is what Ken Paxton, Attorney General of Texas, said on Fox News on Wednesday.
“
You can't stop bad people from doing bad things.
These people aren't going to abide by gun laws anyway, I never understood that argument
.
»
The man, equivalent to the Minister of Justice in Texas, took up an old proposal from Donald Trump, that of arming teachers in schools.
“
What we can do is distribute weapons and train teachers and staff to act quickly because the reality is that we cannot afford to put a policeman in every school.
So training these people in schools is, in my opinion, the best solution to this problem
”
The Attorney General of Texas is notably supported by the
National Riffle Association
(NRA), the powerful arms lobby of the United States.
A lobby which Jean-Éric Branaa recalls that it blocks any reform by its hold on elected officials and the American Congress.
Jean-Éric Branaa "American elected officials remain powerless or under influence"
UNITED STATES Sound Jean Eric Branaa "what can elected officials do? (nothing)" - 9am
Ironically, the NRA is holding its big annual conference this weekend just in Houston, Texas.
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