TEHRAN, May 23 - The administration of President Donald Trump is preparing to publish new rules that would increase the export of American firearms abroad, prompting protests from gun-control activists and human rights groups.
TEHRAN, Young Journalists Club (YJC) - A US State Department official said on Tuesday that the long-delayed rule changes would move the oversight of commercial gun exports from the Department of State to the Department of Commerce.
In September, the Trump administration announced it was preparing to make it easier for US gun makers to sell small arms, including assault rifles and ammunition, to foreign buyers.
The action is part of the Trump administration’s broader overhaul of weapons export policy that was announced in April.
Domestic gun sales have fallen significantly since the election of US President Donald Trump. Gun sales soared under former President Barack Obama, when gun enthusiasts stockpiled weapons and ammunition out of fear that the government would tighten gun laws.
Trump and his fellow Republicans who are majorities in both chambers of Congress all favor gun ownership rights.
The expected relaxing of rules could increase US gun exports by as much as 20 percent, the National Sports Shooting Foundation has estimated.
Remington, America's oldest gun maker, filed for bankruptcy protection in March, weeks after a shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida, killed 17 people and triggered intensified campaigns for gun control by activists.
Activists in gun-violence prevention and human rights see the proposal as a license to export higher levels of death to other nations.
“If you have a society that is much less subject to the rule of law than the US, then the market for firearms is going to produce greater harm,” said John Lindsay-Poland, who monitors human rights and violence in Mexico for the American Friends Service Committee.
Even US lawmakers immersed in the gun issue see a danger in promoting exports of American firearms.
“The Trump administration is once again caving to the gun lobby,” said Senator Chris Murphy, a leader in the Senate on guns. “Making it easier for gun manufacturers to sell more weapons of war to civilians is the absolute wrong thing to do. All this does is incite more violence around world, further damaging our nation’s standing and credibility.”
After the Parkland high school massacre, hundreds of thousands of Americans took part in rallies to demand tighter gun laws. Opponents of stricter gun laws, including the US gun lobby, which supported Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, have dismissed the mounting demands for gun control as being politically motivated.
Source: Press TV
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