After nearly four months in office devoted mostly to the pandemic, U.S. President Joe Biden has turned his attention to perhaps the single most polarizing topic in American life: guns.

In the first two weeks of April, 96 Americans have been victims of mass shootings. Thirty of them died.

In 2019, nearly 40,000 people were killed by firearms – in both homicides and suicides. That’s averaging more than 106 a day.

But the right to bear arms is protected by the U.S. Constitution.

And Biden is merely the latest president to try to introduce controls on who can buy firearms and what models they’re allowed.

And yet even small changes to components, rather than guns themselves, are at risk of being undone by those who consider legislation an infringement of their civil liberties.

In the first of our series, Armed in America, CGTN’s Owen Fairclough looks at guns and the law.

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