BIDEN DEMANDS ACTION TO END ‘CARNAGE’
President addresses nation, calls for steps to address gun violence
Lamenting a uniquely American tragedy, an anguished and angry President Joe Biden delivered an urgent call for new restrictions on firearms Tuesday night after a gunman shot and killed 19 children at a Texas elementary school.
Biden spoke from the White House barely an hour after returning from a five-day trip to Asia that was bracketed by mass shootings in the United States. He pleaded for action to address gun violence after years of failure — and bitterly blamed firearm manufacturers and their supporters for blocking legislation in Washington.
“As a nation, we have to ask: When in God’s name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby?” Biden asked, his voice rising. “When in God’s name do we do what we all know in our gut needs to be done?” He added, “I am sick and tired of it. We have to act. And don’t tell me we can’t have an impact on this carnage.”
With first lady Jill Biden standing by his side in the Roosevelt Room, the president, who has suffered the loss of two of his own children, though not to gun violence, spoke in visceral terms about the grief of the victims’ loved ones and the pain that will endure for the students who survived.
“To lose a child is like having a piece of your soul ripped away,” Biden said. “There’s a hollowness in your chest. You feel like you’re
being sucked into it and never going to be able to get out.”
He called on the nation to hold the victims and families in prayer — but also to work harder to prevent the next tragedy, “It’s time we turned this pain into action,” he said.
At least 19 students and two adults were killed at Robb Elementary School in the town of Uvalde, Texas, according to local officials. The gunman died after being shot by responding officers, local police said.
It was just a week earlier that Biden, on the eve of his overseas trip, traveled to Buffalo, N.Y., to meet with victims’ families after a racist, hate-filled shooting that killed 10 Black people at a grocery store.
In his remarks, Biden said Tuesday’s shooting had made him reflect on why the United States has been uniquely incapable of stopping mass shootings.
“What struck me on that 17-hour flight, what struck me was these kinds of mass shootings rarely happen anywhere else in the world. Why?” he said. “They have mental health problems. They have domestic disputes in other countries. They have people who are lost. But these kinds of mass shootings never happen in other countries like in America.”
It was much too early to tell if the latest violent outbreak could break the political logjam around tightening the nation’s gun laws.
“The idea that an 18year-old kid can walk into a gun store and buy two assault weapons is just wrong,” Biden said. He has previously called for a ban on assault-style weapons, as well as tougher federal background check requirements and “red flag” laws that are meant to keep guns out of the hands of those with mental health problems.
Late Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., set in motion possible action on two House-passed bills to expand federally required background checks for gun purchases, but no votes have been scheduled.
House Democrats passed the two bills in March 2021. One would have eliminated a provision that allows a gun sale to proceed if a background check cannot be completed after three days. The “Charleston loophole” legislation, named after the 2015 massacre in South Carolina, would have extended the review period to 20 days.
A separate bill would have required background checks to close the “gun show loophole,” which allows buyers to forgo a review if they buy a gun at a gun show or online.
Both bills passed with overwhelming Democratic support but were never taken up in a 50-50 Senate, where 10 Republicans would be needed to send the legislation to the president’s desk.
Biden was somber as he returned to the White House Tuesday, having been briefed on the shooting on Air Force One. Shortly before landing in Washington, he spoke with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and offered “any and all assistance” needed, the White House said. He directed that American flags be flown at half-staff through sunset Saturday in honor of the victims in Texas.
Biden was serving as vice president in December 2012 when 20 young children were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. He spent more than a month developing a list of gun control proposals, only to see most of them fail in the Senate three months later.
In the years since, he has decried mass shootings again and again: at schools, churches, restaurants, nightclubs, workplaces and more. In his remarks Tuesday night, Biden repeatedly appeared to choke back tears as he was called to do it again.
“My fellow Americans,” he said, speaking slowly. “I’d hoped when I became president, I would not have to do this. Again.”
“Another massacre. Uvalde, Texas. An elementary school,” he said. “Beautiful, innocent, second, third, fourth graders. And how many scores of little children who witness what happened, see their friends die as if they’re on a battlefield for God’s sake.”
Speaking at an Asian Pacific American event that was to celebrate Biden’s Asia trip, Vice President Kamala Harris said earlier that people normally declare in moments like this, “our hearts break — but our hearts keep getting broken and our broken hearts are nothing compared to the broken hearts of those families.”
“We have to have the courage to take action to ensure something like this never happens again,” she said.
Echoing Biden’s call, former President Barack Obama, who has called the day of the Sandy Hook shooting the darkest of his administration, said, “It’s long past time for action, any kind of action.”
“Michelle and I grieve with the families in Uvalde, who are experiencing pain no one should have to bear,” he said in a statement. “We’re also angry for them. Nearly 10 years after Sandy Hook — and 10 days after Buffalo — our country is paralyzed, not by fear, but by a gun lobby and a political party that have shown no willingness to act in any way that might help prevent these tragedies.”
Tuesday’s massacre was one at least 24 acts of gun violence committed on K-12 campuses during regular school hours in 2022, according to a Washington Post database. Those shootings have left at least 28 people dead — making this year already the third-worst since 1999.
The spate of incidents follows a deadly trend that began immediately after schools returned to in-person learning last year after closures prompted by the pandemic. In 2021, there were 42 acts of campus gun violence, a tally that smashed the previous record despite most schools remaining closed for the first two months of the year.
In total, more than 300,000 students have now been exposed to gun violence on their campuses since the 1999 Columbine High School shooting in Colorado.
The shooting came a day after the FBI released a report saying that the number of active-shooter attacks nationwide had risen sharply last year, doubling the number seen just two years earlier.