Payton Gendron and Salvador Rolando Ramos, the suspects in the Buffalo and Ulvade High School shooting, were both 18 when they bought the assault weapons used in the attacks. Experts say more states and the federal government need to pass laws raising the age to buy firearms to 21
With America reeling from a slew of shootings including mass massacres in Texas and New York, President Joe Biden on Thursday demanded that lawmakers act on gun violence.
Biden’s 17-minute address, his latest appeal for tougher firearms laws, came with 56 lighted candles arrayed along a long corridor behind him to represent US states and territories suffering from gun violence.
“How much more carnage are we willing to accept?” the president asked in the speech, which he delivered with anger in his voice, at times dipping close to a whisper.
“We can’t fail the American people again,” he said, condemning the refusal of a majority of Republican senators to support tougher laws as “unconscionable.”
While Biden called for a ban on assault weapons, he said lawmakers should at a minimum raise the age at which assault weapons can be purchased from 18 to 21. He said that measure to help curb rampant violence that has turned schools and hospitals into “killing fields.”
Let’s see experts say and why raising the minimum age won’t be easy:
Payton Gendron and Salvador Rolando Ramos, the suspects in the Buffalo and Ulvade High School shootings were both just 18 when they bought the assault weapons used in the attacks.
Both were too young to legally purchase alcohol or cigarettes, but old enough to arm themselves with assault-style weapons. In Ramos’ case, he purchased the assault rifles and ammunition as soon as he turned 18 – on his birthday.
Going a little further back, the gunman in the Parkland shooting was 19 and the Sandy Hook shooter was 20.
In such cases, raising the age would have prevented them from getting the weapons, some argue.
’18-20 group among highest risk of committing violence with firearms’
Joshua Horwitz, JD, co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions noted that research shows the 18-20 age group is among the highest risk to commit violence with firearms.
“Yet, in most states the ability to purchase these deadly weapons is less restricted than the ability to purchase beer. This is a clear example of how weaknesses in gun laws continue to pose threats to communities across the country. More states and the federal government need to pass laws restricting firearms to persons 21 years of age or older.
He’s right. Just six states in America California, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Vermont, and Washington State have a minimum age of 21 for “long guns”.
Most of those states passed the laws after the 2019 school shooting in Parkland, Florida, that left 17 dead.
Meanwhile, the age to purchase handguns from federally licensed gun dealers is nationally set at 21.
AR-15 rifles also inflict massive damage to human bodies, and are more fatal than handguns, with the capacity to fire 45 rounds a minute–or 400 with a bump stock.
In the recent high-school shooting, a sheriff told CNN officers didn’t enter the school to confront the shooter out of a fear of “getting shot”.
Horwitz warned that these sorts of tragic events will continue until ‘meaningful, comprehensive, and evidence-based policies’ are enacted to stop them.
Kelly Drane, research director at Giffords Law Center, a gun-reform advocacy group, agreed, telling Fast Company: “We know that 18- to-20-year-olds have a high risk of using firearms to harm other people. They are disproportionately represented a firearm-homicide perpetrators in our country.”
Though school safety researchers support increasing age limits, saying 18 years old is too young to be able to buy a gun and the teenage brain is just too impulsive, it isn’t quite that simple.
A 2019 report from the Secret Service found that in half the school shootings they studied, the gun used was either readily accessible at home or not meaningfully secured.
Politics as usual
And despite Biden’s pleas, action isn’t likely as Republican lawmakers have largely resisted tougher gun laws.
The political challenge of legislating in a 50-50 Senate, where most bills require 60 votes to pass, means that more wide-ranging reforms are unrealistic.
Mitch McConnell, leader of the Senate Republicans, told reporters that senators were trying to “target the problem” — which he said was “mental illness and school safety” rather than the availability of firearms.
House Democrats are nevertheless set to pass a much broader but largely symbolic “Protecting Our Kids Act,” which calls for raising the purchasing age for semi-automatic rifles from 18 to 21 and a ban on high-capacity magazines.
The package will likely pass the Democratic-led House next week before dying amid Republican opposition in the Senate.
With regulation being so difficult at the federal level, an effort is also underway among state legislatures to push for tighter gun laws.
California lawmakers advanced a gun control package in the aftermath of the Uvalde shooting that included proposals to open up gunmakers to civil legal liability in certain cases.
The proposals echo action by lawmakers in New York state, while a permit-to-buy bill is moving through the Delaware legislature and pro-gun rights Texas is looking to “make legislative recommendations” in response to the Uvalde shooting.
Then there’s the legal issues.
Legal challenges
Just this month judges appointed by Donald Trump found that California raising the age of gun ownership was unconstitutional. The judges cited colonial militias as the reason: “America would not exist without the heroism of the young adults who fought and died in our revolutionary army,” one wrote.
Activists for greater restrictions also fear a setback at the federal level as the Supreme Court is set to issue its first major Second Amendment opinion in more than a decade.
Justices are expected to rule in the coming weeks in a dispute over New York state’s stringent limits on the concealed carry of handguns outside the home.
A narrow opinion could affect just a few states with similar laws, but campaigners fear the conservative majority will make a broader ruling clearing the way for constitutional challenges to gun safety laws across the country.
With inputs from agencies
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