US goes in two directions on guns

Senate approves bill while Supreme Court expands right to carry arms

The United States Senate yesterday easily approved a bipartisan gun violence bill that seemed unthinkable just a month ago, clearing the way for final congressional approval of what will be lawmakers’ most far-reaching response in decades to the nation’s run of brutal mass shootings.

After years of Republican procedural delays that derailed Democratic efforts to curb firearms, Democrats and some Republicans decided that congressional inaction was untenable after last month’s deadly rampages in New York and Texas.

It took weeks of closed-door talks but a group of senators from both parties emerged with a compromise embodying incremental but impactful movement to curb bloodshed that has come to regularly shock — yet no longer surprise — the nation.

The US$13 billion ($20.66b) measure would toughen background checks for the youngest gun buyers, keep firearms from more domestic violence offenders and help states put in place red flag laws that make it easier for authorities to take weapons from people adjudged dangerous.

It would also fund local programmes for school safety, mental health and violence prevention.

The day proved bittersweet for advocates of curtailing gun violence.

Underscoring the enduring potency of conservative clout, the rightleaning Supreme Court issued a decision expanding the right of Americans

to carry arms in public. The justices struck down a New York law that has required people to prove a need for carrying a weapon before they get a licence to do so.

President Joe Biden said he was “deeply disappointed” by the Supreme Court ruling. It “contradicts both common sense and the Constitution, and should deeply trouble us all,” he said. AP