Partisan divide an obstacle to U.S. finding solutions to "senseless" gun violence

WASHINGTON, April 14 (Xinhua) -- Amid the worst U.S. crime wave in decades, Democrats and Republicans are still at odds over the cause of unchecked violence in cities nationwide -- and what to do about it.

New York City on Tuesday saw one of the most horrific shootings in decades when a gunman opened fire into commuters at a crowded subway station, leaving at least 29 people shot or otherwise injured.

Actually, New York and a lot of other cities around the United States have been experiencing "a pretty significant increase in shootings and homicides," a trend that started in the spring of 2020, according to Christopher Herrmann, assistant professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, specializing in crime analysis.

Though the year of 2021 was the worst year of gun violence in the country in nearly 30 years, partisan gridlock has doomed effective reforms and legislation action on gun control, which are necessary for preventing mass shootings and saving lives.

DIVISIVE GUN POLICY

Democrats have called for regulation and legislation as part of efforts to confront rising gun violence.

U.S. Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat, has fought for a decade for more gun control laws, ever since the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012, in which a gunman opened fire in a building full of children, killing over two dozen people. Murphy is leading a large group of Democratic lawmakers to pressure U.S. President Joe Biden to take action on firearms.

"It's time for more urgency from the administration as the gun violence epidemic gets worse by the day," Murphy said in an interview with Politico, just days before the New York City shooting.

The White House is increasingly vocal about curbing gun violence, which analysts said is a bid to enact meaningful legislation before the midterm elections, while Republicans have tried to pin the blame on what they call progressive policies.

Those include measures to defund the police, which were put into place in many cities shortly after the 2020 murder of George Floyd, an unarmed African American man killed by a white police officer.

GOP lawmakers also blame no-bail laws that put criminals back on the street right after they've been arrested.

Jim Chris -- not his real name, as he's not cleared to speak to media -- a police officer in the state of Pennsylvania, told Xinhua that defund-the-police movements have "made these violent (criminals) bold."

"There's no question about it -- the defund police movement is a disaster for public safety," TV personality and Republican Strategist Ford O'Connell told Xinhua. "It puts people's lives at risk. And the very people they say it's meant to benefit are the ones that are actually harmed the most."

Biden has opposed calls to "defund the police" since the movement began to build support in 2020. He reiterated his stance in his recent State of the Union address, declaring, "We should all agree: The answer is not to defund the police. The answer is to fund the police."

When asked whether they want the police to spend more, the same or less time in their area, 61 percent of African Americans want the police presence to remain the same, as 67 percent of all U.S. adults prefer the status quo, including 71 percent of White Americans, according to a Gallup poll.

O'Connell noted there has been big money behind campaigns of several progressive district attorneys in cities nationwide.

Many such district attorneys, from San Francisco to New York City, Philadelphia and Northern Virginia, have come under fire from critics who claim they have no interest in doing their job of prosecuting criminals.

Rather, they want to completely revamp the criminal justice system -- the job of Congress, not prosecutors, Republicans said.

MEASURES TAKEN

Meanwhile, the White House has enacted several measures to curb so-called "ghost guns," weapons that are not marked with serial numbers, making them impossible to trace back to shooters.

"These guns are weapons of choice for many criminals," Biden said from the White House on Monday. "We're going to do everything we can to deprive them of that choice and when we find them, put them in jail for a long, long time."

"This is an absolutely necessary reform, that essentially brings U.S. regulations back into line with the fast-evolving state of small arms in America. It will help police and the courts do their jobs," Clay Ramsay, a researcher at the center for international and security studies at the University of Maryland, told Xinhua.

The new policy on "ghost guns" has nevertheless drawn the ire of gun rights advocates and some Republicans who called it "an attack on the Second Amendment" that gives Americans the right to bear arms.

The National Rifle Association, a U.S.-based gun rights lobbying group, responded that it believes this "ban" on "ghost guns" will not affect violent criminals.

"These violent crime sprees will continue unabated until they are arrested/prosecuted/punished," it noted in a statement.

The problem is not "ghost guns," said David Webb, host of Fox News' Reality Check, accusing Biden of being reluctant to add pressure on mayors and prosecutors to fight crimes.