President Joe Biden on Wednesday marked one yr because the bloodbath at a faculty in Uvalde, Texas, by once more calling on lawmakers to move long-awaited gun security measures.
On Might 24, 2022, a teenage gunman killed 19 youngsters and two lecturers at Robb Elementary Faculty. The incident stays Texas’ deadliest faculty capturing of all time, and reignited nationwide anger over gun violence and lax firearm rules.
The president delivered a speech on the somber anniversary as first woman Jill Biden seemed on, with the 2 surrounded by 21 white candles bearing the names of the victims.
“Standing there in Uvalde, Jill and I couldn’t assist however assume that too many faculties, too many on a regular basis locations, have grow to be killing fields in communities all throughout each a part of America,” Biden mentioned, recalling his go to to the border city a yr earlier. “In every place, we hear the identical message: ‘Do one thing. For God’s sake, please do one thing.’”
Legislation enforcement got here beneath extreme criticism for its response to the capturing. A report by Texas lawmakers revealed that almost 400 closely armed officers from federal, state and native businesses had been on the scene, however that they waited greater than an hour earlier than confronting and killing the gunman. Officers additionally prevented mother and father who gathered by the college from retrieving their youngsters inside, and at instances bought bodily with them for expressing anger at authorities’ inaction.
At present, a state-level legal probe into the hesitant police response remains to be ongoing, and Uvalde authorities proceed to withhold public information associated to the capturing. Some Uvalde households have filed lawsuits towards gun producers and legislation enforcement.
“It’s time to behave. It’s time to make our voices heard — not as Democrats or as Republicans, however as mates, as neighbors, as mother and father, and as fellow People,” Biden mentioned. “As a result of as we speak, weapons stay the number-one killer — the number-one killer — of youngsters in America.”
A month after the tragedy, Biden had signed the nation’s most sweeping gun security invoice in a long time, which included stricter background checks.
However the president this week renewed his requires lawmakers to move laws that completely bans AR-style firearms and high-capacity magazines, establishes common background checks and a nationwide “crimson flag” legislation, requires protected storage of firearms, and ends gun producers’ immunity from legal responsibility.
“What number of extra mother and father will dwell their worst nightmare earlier than we stand as much as the gun foyer?” Biden mentioned.
The president and supporters of gun security reforms — together with Uvalde mother and father — have tried a number of instances to advance such proposals, just for conservative legislators to dam them. With the GOP-controlled Home and the Democrat-controlled Senate every having a slim political majority in Washington, it’s unlikely that the U.S. Congress will move what Biden is looking for.
In Texas’ Republican-controlled state Legislature, lawmakers previously yr have rejected virtually each proposal to enhance gun security. GOP Gov. Greg Abbott has additionally shut down talks of stricter gun legal guidelines — the identical response he had after a number of different mass shootings in his state.
“Since Uvalde, our nation has skilled a staggering 650 mass shootings,” the president mentioned. “We are able to’t finish this epidemic till Congress move some commonsense gun security legal guidelines and preserve weapons of conflict off our streets and out of the arms of harmful folks, [and] till states do the identical factor.”
He added: “I do know for a very long time it’s been exhausting to make progress. However there’ll come some extent the place our voices are so loud, our willpower so clear, that we will now not be stopped. We are going to act.”