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Shootings in US Prompt Debate on Purchase Age for AR-Style Rifles

The gunmen in two of the nation’s most recent mass shootings legally bought their semiautomatic rifles after they turned 18. That’s prompting Congress and some governors and state lawmakers to revisit the question of whether to raise the minimum age for purchasing such high-powered weapons. 

Only six states require someone to be at least 21 years old to buy rifles and shotguns. Advocates argue that such a limit might have prevented the elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, that left 19 children and two teachers dead and the racially motivated supermarket attack in Buffalo, New York, that killed 10. 

Lawmakers in New York and Utah have proposed legislation that would raise the minimum age to buy AR-15-style rifles to 21. A similar restriction is expected to move as soon as next week in the U.S. House, where it has some bipartisan support, but the legislation faces uncertainty in the closely divided Senate. 

Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, a Republican who chairs the National Governors Association, said the idea should be up for discussion. 

“I think you’ve got to be able to talk about the AR-15-style weapons, and whether that’s an 18 or 21 age,” Hutchinson told CNN this week. “You have to at least have a conversation about that.” 

But Hutchinson, who leaves office in January, isn’t pushing for the limit in his own state. Any proposed gun restrictions there are unlikely to find support among Republicans who control the Legislature. Arkansas Republicans are echoing their party’s calls at the national level to focus instead on beefing up school security or addressing mental health. 

Partisan split

A recent survey of governors by The Associated Press highlighted the partisan split over whether the minimum age should be higher. Many Democratic governors who responded supported restrictions such as increasing the age to buy semiautomatic weapons. But only one Republican — Vermont Governor Phil Scott, whose state has a minimum age of 21 to buy guns, with some exceptions — supported such a move. 

Gun control advocates say raising the age offers one of the clearest steps that could have stopped or prevented the most recent mass shootings. The Uvalde attacker, Salvador Ramos, bought the AR-15 he used shortly after he turned 18. 

If Ramos hadn’t been able to buy the weapon, “maybe he would have gotten the mental health treatment he needed and this never would have happened, or maybe someone would have called some signs out to law enforcement that this person was acting erratically,” said Sean Holihan, state legislative director with the gun control advocacy group Giffords. “But it’s clear if there had been a law in place where he would have been 21 years old, he wouldn’t have been able to purchase that gun.” 

Federal law prohibits federally licensed dealers from selling handguns to anyone under age 21, but people age 18 to 20 can still buy handguns from unlicensed dealers in their state. 

Florida is a rare example of a Republican-led state that took swift action on gun restrictions after a mass shooting. In 2018, weeks after the deadly shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, then-Governor Rick Scott signed legislation raising the minimum age to buy rifles from 18 to 21, along with a host of other school safety and gun control measures. 

The law narrowly passed in both chambers of the GOP-controlled Legislature following intense lobbying from student survivors and grieving families, marking a moment of compromise in a state that previously shunned restrictions on firearms. Scott, a Republican, said at the time that the law balanced “our individual rights with the need for public safety.” 

Now a U.S. senator, Scott did not immediately return an emailed request for comment on whether such legislation should be implemented in other states. 

New York bills

The Buffalo and Uvalde attacks are similarly prompting New York lawmakers this week to consider an age limit increase for buying semiautomatic rifles as part of a package of gun safety bills. Under the proposal, those age 21 and older who want to buy or possess a new semiautomatic rifle would have to obtain a license. 

“New York already has some of the toughest gun laws in the country, but clearly we need to make them even stronger,” Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul said. “New Yorkers deserve to feel safe in schools, in grocery stores, in movie theaters, in shopping malls and on our streets — and we must do everything in our power to protect them.” 

A proposal in Utah that would raise the minimum age to buy any firearm to 21 is more of a long shot in that state’s Republican-controlled Legislature. 

“If you are not able to consume alcohol, why should you be able to buy a gun?” Democratic Senator Derek Kitchen said of his proposal. 

The age provision in the bill before the U.S. House has some bipartisan support, but it remains unclear which aspects of the legislation will pass and be taken up in the Senate. Any measure there needs support from at least 10 Republicans to pass. 

The House bill also would make it a federal offense to import, manufacture or possess large-capacity magazines and creates a grant program to buy back such magazines. It encourages safe firearms storage and builds on the executive branch’s ban on bump stock devices and so-called ghost guns made from 3-D printers. 

Several Republicans have pointed to a ruling by a federal appeals court panel that found California’s ban on the sale of semiautomatic weapons to adults under 21 is unconstitutional. Republican governors who decline to pursue the age increase also cite the political reality in their GOP-controlled legislatures. 

Why try?

West Virginia Governor Jim Justice this week said he supports raising the minimum age for buying an AR-15-style rifle to 21 but isn’t proposing such a change in his state. 

“First of all, do I really feel like an 18-year-old ought to be able to walk in and buy an assault weapon? I don’t,” the Republican governor told reporters this week. 

He appeared pessimistic about that or any other gun control measure gaining traction in his state. 

“I can call 1,000 special sessions,” he said. “And if all I’m doing is calling 1,000 special sessions for people just to come and talk and get up on a soap box and get nothing done, why?”
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New Zealand Urges US Engagement With Pacific Island States 

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern urged President Joe Biden to engage more with Pacific Island states amid China’s concerted push to increase its clout in the region when she met with the U.S. leader at the White House on Tuesday.

“We’ll be encouraging the United States to really continue and strengthen engagement in our region, including economic engagement, which is really critical to our region,” Ardern said.

Biden reiterated that his administration was seeking to partner with countries in the region. “We have more work to do in those Pacific Islands,” he said.

The Biden-Ardern meeting followed a series of engagements the administration has had with Indo-Pacific countries in May, beginning with a Washington summit with leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN; Biden’s visit last week to allies South Korea and Japan; and the summit in Tokyo among leaders of the Quad, an informal grouping of the U.S., Japan, India and Australia.

The Pacific Islands include Papua New Guinea, the U.S. commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, French Polynesia, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Palau, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, and Wallis and Futuna.

Since Chinese President Xi Jinping took office in 2013, Beijing has significantly bolstered involvement in the Pacific Islands region, focusing on expanding economic ties and increasing its footprint in the diplomacy and security realms. According to a 2018 U.S. government report, China is a major player in the region, well ahead of the United States in most areas including trade, investment, development assistance and tourism.

The Biden administration is “playing catch-up,” said Patrick Cronin, the Asia-Pacific security chair at Hudson Institute.

“We’ve relied very heavily over the years on Australia, for instance, for their development, engagement with the Pacific Islands,” Cronin told VOA. “Clearly, that’s not sufficient.”

In February, Antony Blinken went to Fiji — the first U.S. secretary of state to make the trip in 36 years — and promised a new era of regional focus and engagement from the U.S.

Chinese presence

New Zealand has raised concerns about the Chinese presence in the Indo-Pacific region following Beijing’s security deal with the Solomon Islands. The pact, signed in April, would allow China to “make ship visits to, carry out logistical replacement in, and have stopover and transition in the Solomon Islands.”

Meanwhile, on Saturday, Beijing signed a bilateral agreement with Samoa promising “greater collaboration.” The deal includes an economic and technical cooperation agreement, a handover certificate for an arts and culture center and the Samoa-China Friendship Park, and an exchange of letters for a fingerprint laboratory for the police, a Samoan government news release said.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has been on a 10-country diplomatic blitz, pushing for a sweeping regional security pact that would allow Beijing to expand political ties, increase maritime cooperation and gain greater access to natural resources in return for millions of dollars in financial assistance and the prospect of a free trade agreement opening access to China’s market of 1.4 billion people.

So far, China’s effort has been rebuffed. Earlier this week, the Pacific Island leaders said they could not agree to the “Common Development Vision” proposed by Beijing.

The 10 Pacific Island nations are concerned about the “substance of the communique and the lack of consensus building around the process by which China pursued it,” said Anna Powles, senior lecturer at the Centre for Defense and Security Studies at Massey University in New Zealand.

While China is likely to double down on its bilateral relationships in the Pacific, it is also set to continue to pursue this new multilateral approach, Powles told VOA.

In their meeting, Biden and Ardern “did not get into specific details about efforts by other countries,” a senior administration official told VOA when asked whether the U.S. was concerned about the Chinese initiative.

“They did discuss the importance of working together to present an affirmative vision for the region as well as solidifying the traditional areas of cooperation and building new ones,” the official said.

Indo-Pacific Economic Framework

Ardern expressed support for the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, or IPEF, calling it “a significant opportunity to build the economic resilience of our region,” but signaled that New Zealand would continue to advocate for the U.S. to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, or CPTPP.

IPEF is the leading U.S. effort to reengage Indo-Pacific nations in trade more than five years after the Trump administration withdrew from a regional comprehensive trade pact, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP. Following Washington’s departure, TPP eventually became CPTPP — an 11-country bloc that now constitutes one of the largest free trade areas in the world.

Thirteen countries, including the Pacific Island nations of New Zealand and Fiji, have signed on as “founding members” of IPEF, an outline of standards and norms to facilitate trade that Biden launched while he was in Tokyo.

IPEF is not a free trade agreement that needs to be passed by Congress, where there is now little political appetite to open U.S. markets due to protectionist concerns for American workers.

Without a trade promotion authority granted by Congress, the administration lacks credibility in the region, said Susan Aaronson, professor at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University.

However, China’s “lack of respect for the rule of law to its own citizens” and toward existing supply chain contracts during the pandemic has been “so dramatic” that it is causing countries to rethink their relationships, she said.

“It is a huge opportunity for the United States,” she told VOA, adding that IPEF is “a creative way to try to get at these issues.”

Gun reform

During their meeting, Biden, who had just returned from the town of Uvalde, Texas, where an 18-year-old man killed 19 children and two teachers, praised Ardern’s leadership in curbing extremism and gun violence in New Zealand.

“We need your guidance,” he said.

In 2019, less than a month after a white supremacist gunman killed 51 Muslim worshippers at two Christchurch mosques, New Zealand lawmakers voted overwhelmingly to ban military-style semiautomatic weapons and enacted a buyback program.

“Our experience, of course, in this regard, is our own, but if there’s anything that we can share that would be of any value, we are here to share it,” Ardern said.

According to the nonprofit group Gun Violence Archive, the Uvalde school shooting is the 213th mass shooting in which four or more people were shot or killed in the U.S. in 2022.

“There’s an expression by an Irish poet that says, ‘Too long a suffering makes a stone of the heart.’ Well, there’s an awful lot of suffering,” Biden told Ardern. “I’ve been to more mass shooting aftermaths than, I think, any president in American history, unfortunately.”

Even as Americans from both sides of the political aisle demand action in the wake of the latest violence, gun control legislation has remained deadlocked for decades, with Senate Republicans blocking even measures that receive broad public support, such as universal background checks for gun buyers.
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