United States President Donald Trump on Tuesday confirmed repealing of a regulation introduced by former President Barack Obama, which prohibited people with mental problems from buying guns in the country.
The move, seen as a victory for gun-rights groups like National Rifle Association (NRA), will now allow mentally ill people to purchase guns. This was one of the first proposals promoted by the new US Congress after the results of the presidential elections in November 2016, EFE reports.
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Obama, during his term, had promoted ban of gun sales to mentally ill people as part of his larger plan over access to firearms after the Newtown Sandy Hook school massacre in 2012, which resulted in death of 20 children and six teachers. A 20-year-old man, Adam Lanza, had shot the children in the deadliest mass shooting in a high school in the US. Before driving to the school, Lanza had shot and killed his mother at their Newtown home. As first responders arrived at the scene, Lanza committed suicide by shooting himself in the head. The reason as to why he killed as many people was never found out.
Trump's decision has been cheered by the NRA, the principal group promoting the right of individual citizens to bear arms.
"Today's Senate vote was the next step in rolling back some of the egregious government overreach that characterized the Obama era," Chris W Cox, the executive director of the NRA gun lobby, said after hearing about the Senate's decision.
Democrat Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy said that the regulation repealed by the Trump administration only affected a small number of people. Connecticut is where the Newtown massacre occurred.
"The risk is that someone who can't literally deposit their own paycheck probably can't, or likely can't, responsibly own and protect a gun," Murphy said.
Data shows that a tiny fraction of gun violence comes from the mentally ill. Only four percent of violence in the US is attributable to schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or depression. This means that almost 96 percent of violence in America has nothing to do with people who are mentally unsound or suffer from mental illness.
