Biden asks the US Congress to impose additional restrictions on the purchase of firearms

US President Joe Biden has asked Congress to pass legislation as soon as possible that would set the age limit for buying an assault rifle at 21 years after a new wave of murders with firearms.

“The scourge of gun violence in America calls for stronger action,” Biden wrote in a letter sent to Congress after seven people were killed in a shooting in Half Moon Bay, California on Monday, the second in two days this year.

In condemning this “new act of senseless violence,” the US president referred to two bills that were submitted to Congress on Tuesday by three senators from his party.

One of the proposals is aimed at a complete ban on the sale of “military-style” assault weapons; another is seeking to raise the legal age for purchasing standard assault weapons in the United States from 18 to 21.

“I once again urge both houses of Congress to act quickly and send this Assault Weapons Ban Bill to my office for ratification,” Joe Biden wrote.

The president had long and vainly asked for the reinstatement of the assault weapons ban in the United States, as happened between 1994 and 2004, but faced opposition from the Republican Party, who defended the constitutional right to own guns.

Since the beginning of the year, the Republican Party has controlled the House of Representatives, making an outright ban unlikely.

On Saturday, a 72-year-old Asian man armed with an assault weapon broke into the Star Ballroom in Monterey Park, California, where he fired 42 bullets and killed 11 men and women over the age of 50.

On Monday, 600 km north of this place, in Half Moon Bay, another man, also of Asian descent, killed at least seven Chinese farm workers on two farms.

In 2021, about 49,000 people died from firearms in the US, up from 45,000 in 2020, representing more than 130 deaths per day, more than half of which are suicides.