With 234 votes in favor and 193 against, the Congress’s House of Representatives voted through the law on Friday, reports AFP. The law, a compromise, is the largest regulation of gun ownership made in the United States at the federal level in nearly 30 years.
The initiative for the law came after the school massacre in Uvalde, where 19 children and two adults were shot dead, and after the act in a grocery store in Buffalo, where ten black people were killed. Both events occurred in May.
– No law can heal the families or communities of the victims. But we can prevent others from experiencing the same trauma, said the chairman of the Justice Committee, the Democrat Jerrold Nadler, according to AP.
More detailed background checks for arms buyers
The law package’s main proposals include more detailed background checks for arms buyers who have not turned 21, $ 11 billion for the fight against mental illness and $ 2 billion to be used to increase security in the country’s schools.
Even if the law is only embraced by six states wholeheartedly at the moment, the law will be able to have effect across the country as it makes many states “vulnerable to new legal changes” according to CNN. It is believed that the law may have an extensive dominance effect that may also affect age-based controls and restrictions on who can procure different types of magazines and rifles.
Has broad support
When the Senate earlier in the day voted through the law, it was praised from both the Republican and Democratic sides.
“Tonight, the United States has done something that many considered impossible just a few weeks ago: we have voted through the first proper gun law in nearly 30 years,” Senate Majority Leader Democrat Chuck Schumer said after the Senate vote on Thursday.
His Republican counterpart, Mitch McConnell, said the law would make the United States safer “without making our country any less free.”
However, both the National Rifle Association (NRA) and many Republicans in both houses of Congress opposed the law.