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Ahead of the November 8 midterms, FRANCE 24 takes you on a tour down the Mississippi River with a series of reports by Fanny Allard. The third of five episodes brings us to Missouri, which has some of the weakest gun laws and one of the highest gun violence rates in the US.
Missouri has the fifth highest rate of gun deaths in the country and some of the laxest gun laws. The state doesn’t have a minimum age to purchase a firearm and anyone who can legally own a gun can openly carry it without a permit.
Until recently, Missouri’s biggest city, St. Louis, held the grim title of murder capital of the US and still has the second highest murder rate in the country.
Zacheriah Davis’s daughter D’Asia Bowers was one of the nearly 160 victims of gun violence in St. Louis this year.
Davis believes more gun control is urgently needed. “We’re just irresponsible and this epidemic that we have with guns in this country, if we don’t have comprehensive gun reform, if we don’t lobby our representatives and our public officials, if we don’t do something, we’ll constantly have individuals who are hurt and killed and murdered senselessly,” he said.
But others see the matter differently. “I believe a lot of what you hear and see as far as using a firearm in an inappropriate way are not done by lawful owners,” said Les Steinberg, manager of the Gateway Gun Club. “The laws are good for the lawful people, I think the laws are ignored by many others.”
After the mass shooting at Robb elementary in Uvalde, Texas, President Joe Biden once again promised to ban assault weapons. Steinberg says that wouldn’t help much with daily gun violence.
“Everytime there’s a bad incident involving firearms someone wants to ban the assault rifle,” he said. “If they did for whatever reason, it would have very little impact because this rifle is used in an extremely small percentage of incidences. It’s not gonna make much of a change in gun violence.”
With gun violence on the rise, many Americans agree on the need for change but not the solution. Democrats believe the answer is more gun control while Republicans argue the key is tougher policing.
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