Biden’s chance for gun control

Joe Biden is entitled to feel devastated after the latest mass shooting, in which 10 people were mindlessly slaughtered at a grocery store in Boulder, Colorado, by a 21-year-old man armed with deadly weapons intended for use on wartime battlefields. But the US President also should feel determined following the horrifying bloodbath, which came days after last week’s killing by another allegedly troubled lone gunman of eight people, including six women of Asian descent, at spas in Atlanta, Georgia. After a pandemic lull, the mass shootings that bring the most powerful nation such discredit are starting up again. And the challenge to Mr Biden is to go where all his recent White House predecessors have failed to go and do something effective about gun control.

The massacre at the King Soopers store in Boulder and the Atlanta shootings epitomise all that is rotten and indefensible about US gun laws, or the absence of them. They are an indictment of the country’s gutless politicians and their failure to act.

Syrian-born Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, who has lived in the US most of his life and has a troubled background, was able to buy his Rutger AR-556 firearm, developed for use on battlefields, and another handgun six days before he embarked on the Boulder massacre. Among those he gunned down was a heroic first-responder policeman, the father of seven children.

Atlanta shooter Robert Aaron Long, also 21, did not even wait that long. He bought his weapon just before he launched his killing spree, such is the freedom with which even individuals known to be deranged can get their hands on deadly weapons in the US.

Mr Biden was right to demand the US congress not “wait another minute, let alone an hour, to take commonsense steps that will save lives in the future”. He also announced he was preparing executive orders if the usual self-serving political bickering again gets in the way of sensible gun-control measures. Mr Biden wants congress to pass legislation approved by the House of Representatives earlier this month that would expand background checks on gun purchasers. He also wants a ban on high-velocity assault-style weapons and high-capacity magazines.

There is nothing revolutionary about the legislation. In 1994, a 10-year law banned such weapons. But when it expired in 2004, congress — then controlled by Republicans — declined to renew it. George W. Bush, president at the time, and his successor Barack Obama talked the talk on gun control but achieved little. During his term, Donald Trump was praised by the National Rifle Association as the best friend it ever had in the White House. The resurgence in mass shootings is the inevitable ongoing consequence of there being a staggering total of almost 400 million weapons in private hands in the US — far more than there are people. The Boulder and Atlanta massacres are part of the dreadful toll that, outside of a pandemic, normally results in at least 40,000 people killed in gun violence in the US each year.

Even American courts are invariably feeble when ruling on anything perceived to challenge the second amendment right to bear arms. Yet the amendment was ratified in December 1791, when the firearms of the day were muskets and flintlock pistols. America’s founding fathers, when they enacted the amendment, could not have anticipated the murderous killing machines that are now so easily obtained. The litany of gun massacres is long and shameful. It brings disgrace to global perceptions of the US. Mr Biden, with his history of successfully working across party lines, is uniquely placed to achieve the congressional support for sensible gun control that should be a no-brainer for Republicans and Democrats alike, and should not provoke a divide between conservatives and liberals. After the 1996 Port Arthur massacre, John Howard displayed the political courage and determination needed to meet the challenge Australia confronted. Mr Biden should follow his example.