US President Joe Biden’s administration announced on Thursday tougher regulations on the sale of firearms to force sellers to check the profile of buyers, Reuters and Agerpres reported.

The ruling, published by the US Department of Justice, aims to close legal loopholes in the law, which was passed in June 2022 with the support of the Biden administration after a series of deadly gun attacks.

The rules are intended to clarify the definition of “persons engaged in the trade” in weapons, to force sellers to obtain a license and thus obligate them to conduct criminal and psychological background checks on their buyers.

They also tighten controls on the trade in collectible guns and allow the government to better track the movement of registered guns from one owner to another.

There are now more personal guns than residents in the US, largely because of the ease with which Americans have access to them. One in three adults owns at least one gun, and nearly one in two adults lives in a household with a gun.

The result of this proliferation is a very high rate of gun deaths in the United States, incomparable to rates in other developed countries.

According to the non-governmental organization Gun Violence Archive, 44,374 people were killed by firearms in 2022 in the US, with a slight decrease this year to 28,793 deaths in the first eight months of 2023. Suicides account for nearly 55% of firearm deaths. .

The Biden administration has also cracked down on domestically assembled weapons “kits.”

The new decision by the Biden administration comes after the Washington Supreme Court granted his request in August to reinstate, at least for the time being, a federal regulation aimed at restricting privately manufactured firearms, called “ghost guns,” that are difficult for law enforcement. follow up

The regulation, drafted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) in 2022 to combat the rapid proliferation of handguns, bans kits without serial numbers that can be obtained online or at a store without a background check.

Kits can be quickly assembled into a working firearm. The rule clarifies that a firearm qualifies as a “firearm” under the federal Gun Control Act, expanding the definition of a firearm to include parts and assemblies that can be easily converted into a weapon.

It mandated serial numbers and required licenses from manufacturers and sellers. Sellers must also vet buyers before selling.

The Biden administration said repealing the rule would allow “an irreversible flow of large numbers of undetected phantom weapons into our nation’s communities.”