Anguished and angry, President Joe Biden made a call for increased restrictions on firearms following the shooting death of at least 19 children in a Texas elementary school.
Biden spoke Tuesday night at the White House, less than an hour after returning from five-days in Asia. The trip was marred by mass shootings here. After years of failure, he pleaded for gun violence to be addressed and bitterly blamed the firearm manufacturers and their supporters who blocked legislation in Washington.
Biden expressed emotion by saying, “When in God’s name will we stand up to the Gun Lobby?” “Why aren’t we willing to accept this carnage?” “Why do we continue to allow this to happen?”
Jill Biden, first lady, was standing beside him in the Roosevelt Room. The president, who had lost two of his children to gun violence, spoke viscerally about the grief of the families of the victims as well as the pain that will be felt by the survivors.
Biden stated, “Losing a child feels like losing a piece of your soul.” There’s a hollowness inside your chest. It feels like you are being pulled into it, and that you will never be able get out.
He urged the nation to pray for the families of the victims, and to also work harder to prevent future tragedies.
According to officials, at least 19 students were murdered at Robb Elementary School, a heavily Latino community in Uvalde, Texas. Two adults were also among the victims. Local police reported that the gunman was killed after being shot by responding officers.
Biden had just arrived in Buffalo for a meeting with the families of victims after a hate-filled, racist shooter shot and killed 10 Black men at a Buffalo grocery store.
These tragedies were a sobering reminder of the brutality and frequency of an American epidemic in mass gun violence.
Biden stated that “these kinds of mass shootings rarely occur anywhere else in the globe,” reflecting the fact that while other countries have people who are filled with hatred or have mental health issues, no other industrialized country experiences the same level of gun violence as the U.S.
