US President Joe Biden’s administration announced on Thursday that it would tighten regulations on the arms trade to require sellers to verify buyer profiles.
The regulations issued by the Justice Department aim to close loopholes in a law enacted in June 2022 with support from the Biden administration after a series of deadly shootings.
The aim of these regulations is to clarify the definition of persons “involved in trafficking in arms”, encourage sellers to obtain a license and thus oblige them to check the criminal and psychological background of their buyers.
They also increase control over the trade in collectible weapons and allow the government to better track the movement of registered weapons from one owner to another.
The United States has more individual weapons than people, in part because Americans have easy access to them. One in three adults owns at least one gun and almost one in two adults lives in a household with a gun.
The result of this prevalence is the very high rate of firearm deaths in the United States, which is incomparable to that of other developed countries.
According to the NGO Gun Violence Archive, 44,374 people were killed by firearms in the United States in 2022, with a slight decrease this year to 28,793 deaths in the first eight months of 2023.
Suicides account for nearly 55% of gun deaths.