In spite of the massacre in Orlando, US Senate rejects Gun Control measures

Washington Date 21 (News Agency): In spite of the massacre in Orlando, which was the biggest terrorist attack after 9/11, American senate has rejected measures to control unrestrained use of firearm in the country. On Monday all four measures about ‘gun control’ were rejected in the American senate. ‘Orlando shooting’ costed fifty lives including the assailant’s. The Orlando gunman, Omar Mateen used HR-15 rifle for this attack. This rifle is easily available in the United States of America.

The incident of Orland shooting has sparked the issue of gun control once again. Along with American President Barack Obama and Presidential candidate Hilary Clinton, the Democratic Party has started working towards more restriction on the buying and selling of guns. However the Republican Party has opposed generalized restrictions and have refused total ban on the use of guns. In fact presidential candidate of the Republican Party, Donald Trump sparked a firestorm of controversy by his comment about Orlando that ‘had some of the people in the club had guns, then the assailant would have been dead’.

On the same background, a dispute has started again in the US Senate regarding the issue of gun control. At the US Senate Democrat and Republican parties had individually proposed two measures each. Democrats had proposed a complete bar on the individuals on the ‘FBI watch list’ and ‘no fly list’ from buying guns. They also demanded expanded background checks for people with criminal records or mental health issues.

In their proposal the Democrat party had proposed to empower the attorney general to impose a 72-hour delay for individuals on the ‘FBI watch list’ and ‘no fly list’ seeking to purchase a gun. The proposal also suggested for improving the system used for conducting background checks on individuals seeking to purchase a gun. The Republican Party opposed this stating that barring someone from purchasing a gun would be crossing ‘The Second Amendment’.

During the senate both the parties rejected each other’s proposals, resulting in effectively neutralizing all the four measures proposed. This has made it obvious that there is still no consensus about the issue of ‘gun control’ in US. There has not been a single agreement regarding the ‘gun control measure’ in the American senate since 2007. Gun control measures were proposed after the 2012 Connecticut shooting rampage as well as the terrorist attack in ‘San Bernardino’ in California.

In the wake of such development, US Supreme Court has bluntly refused to hear a Second Amendment challenge to a law restricting the use of guns in Connecticut and New York. In October, the United States Court of Appeals upheld the ban justifying the law in both these regions. Supreme Court has also decided to stick to the law. This law had banned a few specific types of ‘semi-automatic rifles’ and ‘high capacity magazines’ used for these rifles.