30 2GM Monday June 13 2022 | the times
Wo r l d
Senators in the US are poised to pass
the most significant gun safety legis-
lation in decades after bipartisan talks
prompted by recent mass shootings in
New York and Texas.
The measures are modest in scope
and fall significantly short of the de-
mands of gun safety reformists, but in-
clude compromises that represent a
breakthrough after 30 years of stale-
mate, mounting bloodshed and in-
creasing public pressure to act.
“It does not do everything that I
think is needed but it reflects important
steps in the right direction and would
be the most significant gun safety legis-
lation to pass Congress in decades,”
President Biden said in a statement.
When Dmitry Medvedev was elected
president of Russia in 2008, the coun-
try’s liberals dared to dream.
“Freedom is better than non-
freedom,” Medvedev, a lawyer with a
passion for western rock groups, said.
Although his appointment was a polit-
ical sleight of hand that allowed Presi-
dent Putin to sidestep term limits and
return to the Kremlin in 2012, Medve-
dev’s one-term tenure ushered in a
short-lived political thaw in Russia.
He rejected Putin’s notion of “sover-
eign” democracy, the byword for strict
Kremlin control over the electoral pro-
cess. “It would be better to talk of genu-
ine democracy,” he said.
Crucially, Medvedev was the firstSenators’ gun control deal ‘step in the right direction’
“There are no excuses for delay and no
reason why it should not move quickly
through the House and Senate.”
The package, hammered out by a bi-
partisan group of senators, has the
support of ten Republicans in the Sen-
ate, enough to get a vote to the 60-
member threshold needed to pass.
It fails to raise the legal age for buying
firearms from 18 to 21 but would grant
authorities access to the juvenile justice
records of under-21s before they make
such a purchase.
It would also offer financial incen-
tives to states to encourage them to
enact “red flag” laws that allow for the
seizure of firearms from people consid-
ered a threat to themselves or others,
though it stops short of requiring such
laws. In addition, it would require more
firearms dealers to be federally licensed— requiring them to conduct back-
ground checks on buyers — and in-
crease funding for school safety and
mental health programmes.
“Families are scared and it is our duty
to come together and get something
done that will help restore their sense of
safety and security in their communi-
ties,” the Senate negotiation group said.
The move fails to meet the sweeping
level of change demanded by Demo-
crats and reform groups on the back of
decades of gun violence — including
raising the minimum age for buying
assault weapons, a ban on high-capaci-
ty magazines and the imposition of uni-
versal background checks on buyers.
Such measures are unlikely to find
traction with Republicans.
Gabrielle Giffords, who retired as a
Democratic member of congress in2012 after she was shot in the head in a
supermarket mass shooting, said:
“Eleven years ago a bullet changed my
life... and Congress has failed to get
anything done since... Cynics said we
couldn’t do it — they said the gun lobby
was too strong.
“This deal represents that it’s still
possible to cut through politics and de-
liver for the American people.”
David Hogg, who survived the mass
shooting at Marjory Stoneman Doug-
las High School in Parkland, Florida, in
2018, co-founded the March for Our
Lives movement, which led more than
400 public protests nationwide on Sat-
urday calling for gun reform.
“We’re not over the finishing line yet,
but this is still major progress on work-
ing across the aisle,” he said. “Told you,
this time is different.”United States
Jacqui Goddard Miami
Horsemen
Russia
Julian O’Shaughnessyappoint him as prime minister. He said
that the president’s movement had
been “defeated” and called on voters to
use the second round to sweep aside his
“deathly projects” and end “30 years of
neoliberalism”. He told an audience of
supporters that Macron had made a
“secret” pledge to the European Com-
mission to cut the budget deficit by
€80 billion, which would require a huge
increase in VAT.
Mélenchon said his left-wing
coalition would usher in a “future
harmony between people” by freez-
ing prices for essential goods, in-
creasing the minimum wage and giv-
ing pay rises for civil servants.
Gabriel Attal, the budget minister,
who is a key ally of Macron, hit back,
saying that the second round would
offer voters a clear choice
between the president’s
pro-European stanceJean-Luc Mélenchon
is pushing President
Macron to cut the
pension age and
increase spending
while the centrist
movement says
public finances
must be in orderPresident Macron suffered a setback in
parliamentary elections last night as
his centrist movement was dragged
into a tight race with the radical left that
could deprive him of a majority.
The first round of the elections left
Macron’s coalition, Together, narrowly
trailing the New Popular Ecological
and Social People’s Union, an alliance
of left-wing parties headed by Jean-Luc
Mélenchon.
Macron, 44, has seven days to win
back disaffected voters and stop them
delivering a hung parliament that
would leave his presidency bogged
down in horsetrading to get any meas-
ures approved over the next five years.
The prospect will be alarming for a
president who appeared all-conquer-
ing seven weeks ago when he won a
second term of office with a comfort-
able victory over Marine Le Pen, the
right-wing leader of National Rally, in
the presidential election.
Commentators said Macron had
been knocked off his pedestal by a
combination of inflation, which is
running at 5.2 per cent, his deci-
sion to hand the post of prime
minister to Élisabeth Borne,
who is widely regarded as a
dull technocrat, and by his
government’s bungled
handling of the Champions
League final between Real
Madrid and Liverpool.
The first round of the
parliamentary election was
marked by a record absten-
tion of more than 50 per
cent in a sign of voter fatigue
amid a fast-changing political
landscape in which the trad-
itional parties of government
have declined.
Yet it represented a notable
success for Mélenchon, 70, a tub-
thumping radical who wants to take
France out of Nato, end the coun-
try’s reliance on nuclear power and
freeze the prices of essential goods.
His alliance won 25.9 per cent of
French voters turn to left
as cost of living crisis bites
the vote, exactly the same as Macron’s
Together, according to an estimate
published by the Ifop institute.
The market research company put
Le Pen’s National Rally on 19 per cent of
the vote, a score too low to ensure a sig-
nificant parliamentary force in the
country’s first-past-the-post system.
The centre-right Republicans were
credited with 11.4 per cent of the vote.
Polling institutes said the first-round
results could presage a hung parlia-
ment, with Together falling short of the
289 seats it needs for a majority. Unless
a candidate wins more than 50 per cent
of the vote, which is rare, the race goes
into a second round next week, involv-
ing the top two candidates and anyone
else who wins 12.5 per cent of the vote.
The France 2 channel predicted that
Macron’s coalition would end up with
255 to 295 seats and the left-wing
alliance with between 150
and 190 seats.
Mélenchon brushed
aside the forecasts, claim-
ing that his coalition
could win an outright
majority in the second
round, forcing Macron toand Mélenchon’s desire to “distance
[France] from the EU”. He added: “We
want to help with the cost of living. [The
left] wants to tax people and companies.
We consider that our public finances
must be in order and that we must do
everything possible to increase the rate
of employment.
“[The left] considers that money is
magic and can be distributed just like
that. I want to tell the French that they
can have a solid majority next week,
which is necessary in the world of disor-
der we are facing.”
Even if Mélenchon fails to win a
majority next weekend, he can still dep-
rive the president of one. That would
represent a significant handicap for
Macron, forcing him to negotiate with
opposition parties in order to push
through his programme, which in-
cludes pledges to increase the retire-
ment age from 62 to 65 and tackle the
cost of living crisis.
Macron suffered a further setback
when Jean-Michel Blanquer, his
former education minister, was elim-
inated in the first round in the Loiret
constituency, which includes the Loire
valley in central France, where he was
hoping to become MP.
Éric Zemmour, the right-wing popu-
list pundit who stood in the April presi-
dential election, also faced humiliation
as he failed in his attempt to become an
MP in Saint Tropez on the Riviera. He
was eliminated in the first round and his
Reconquest party won a meagre 4.3 per
cent of the national vote.
Le Pen, on the other hand, seemed on
course to win re-election as MP for her
Hénin-Beaumont constituency in
northeast France after polling 55.4 per
cent of the vote in the first round.
She blamed the country’s “sclerotic
and anti-democratic” electoral system
for depriving her party of a group of
MPs to match its share of the vote.
Le Pen, 53, said voters had turned
against Macron because of inflation,
the cost of petrol and the Champions
League final fiasco. She urged voters to
tie the president’s hands, saying: “It’s
important not to let Emmanuel Mac-
ron have an absolute majority.”France
Adam Sage Paris
Estimated first round return
Source: Ifop, June 12Left-wing allianceTogetherNational RallyRepublicansReconquestOthers25.9%25.9%19%11.4%4.3%13.5%