US President Donald Trump on Monday called for more controls on firearms sales, while suggesting linking the measure to the migratory reform he is calling for after two shootings that left 29 victims this weekend. United States.
Trump is due to speak about these two tragedies at 10:00 am (1400 GMT) in a speech to the nation from the White House, where the flags were lowered to half mast.
On Saturday morning in El Paso, a Texas town with a Hispanic majority on the Mexican border, a 21-year-old white man with an assault rifle fired at a crowded shopping mall, killing 20 people and injuring 26 others. return. The police examine the racism trail, the gunman being suspected of espousing extremist theses.
Thirteen hours later, in Dayton, Northeastern Ohio, a 24-year-old white man shot dead nine people, including his own sister, and injured 27, before being killed by police officers.
In several tweets, Donald Trump called Monday morning for a better background check of people wishing to buy firearms, but also to couple this measure to “migration reform urgently needed.”
“Republicans and Democrats must come together,” he asked. “Something good, if not BIG, must result from these two tragic events.”
The Republican billionaire, supported by the main lobby of firearms, has not yet announced whether he would visit the scene of the dramas. He also accused the media of “greatly contributing to the anger and rage that have developed” in the United States by broadcasting “fake news”.
– Anti-immigrant rhetoric –
After these two carnages, several elected Democrats recalled that the House of Representatives had adopted a bill several months ago in the direction of a better regulation of firearms sales.
The lower house, with a Democratic majority, has adopted a text “more than 5 months ago to require basic checks on the history of arms sales,” said Sunday one of the candidates for the Democratic primary for the presidential election of 2020, Elizabeth Warren.
“How many people still have to die before Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell sets aside the interests of the NRA and votes for a vote on this bill?” She asked. reference to the first US arms lobby.
Opposition to Donald Trump also sharply criticized the president for his anti-immigrant rhetoric, accused of fueling the rise of intolerance in the country.
“Mr. President, stop your rhetoric racist, hateful and anti-immigrant,” tweeted Bernie Sanders, a favorite of the Democratic primary. “Your language creates a climate that encourages violent extremists,” he added.
Donald Trump “encourages not only racist rhetoric but also the violence that follows,” added another candidate, Beto O’Rourke, from El Paso.
The president’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, tried to appease the situation, tweeting: “White supremacy, like any other form of terrorism, is a plague that must be destroyed.”
– 30 seconds –
The killing of El Paso, in a Walmart hypermarket, is treated as a case of “domestic terrorism”, and its author, identified as Patrick Crusius, was charged on Sunday and faces the death penalty.
He is suspected of having drafted, before taking action, an anti-Hispanic manifesto which also praises the killing that killed 51 people in two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in March.
Seven of the twenty people killed are Mexicans, said Sunday the head of the Mexican diplomacy Marcelo Ebrard, who plans to go Monday in El Paso.
In Ohio, a man with a quick-action rifle and a bulletproof vest left nine dead and 27 wounded in a bustling area of ​​the city.
The balance sheet could have been even more dramatic. Police officers who were patrolling nearby shot and killed Connor Betts thirty seconds after his first shots.
“If they had not been there (…) we could have had hundreds of dead and wounded,” said Nan Whaley, the city’s mayor.
Among the victims are six blacks and three whites between the ages of 22 and 57, including the shooter’s own sister, one of the first to be shot, the police said.
He had arrived at the scene in the same vehicle as her, with another acquaintance who was questioned by the investigators.
His motives are not known for the moment.
