Biden joins those mourning another mass shooting
Since taking office, President Joe Biden has traveled a grim path through American communities desperately grieving in the wake of mass shootings: Uvalde, Texas; Monterey Park, Calif.; Buffalo, N.Y.; Atlanta.
On Friday, he added another to the list: Lewiston, Maine.
Biden huddled privately with the families of those killed or injured during last month’s rampage that claimed the lives of 18 people at a bar and a bowling alley in the city about an hour north of Portland. He also met with nurses, local officials and the law enforcement officers who spent two days hunting the killer.
“Jill and I are here on behalf of the American people to grieve with you, and make sure you know that you’re not alone,” Biden said after stopping by a makeshift memorial in Lewiston with his wife, Jill Biden.
It is the sad reality of the modern presidency that the occupant of the Oval Office is often called upon to channel the country’s sorrow and to directly console those whose lives have been shattered. For Biden, whose own life has been shaped by grief, it is a role he embraces as a necessary part of healing.
The president’s brief visit was not, White House officials acknowledged, a moment for Biden to begin a forceful new push for gun control measures.
In his remarks, which lasted just over four minutes, he did not repeat his call for a ban on assault weapons, universal background checks and other legislation that both parties in Congress agree have no chance of passing among polarized lawmakers.
Instead, the president used the opportunity to urge Americans to seek consensus more broadly in the hopes of avoiding more of the spasms of deadly violence that have become a routine part of life in the United States.
“This is about common sense,” he said. “Reasonable, responsible measures to protect our children, our families, our communities. Because regardless of our politics, this is about protecting our freedom to go to a bowling alley, restaurant, school, church without being shot and killed.”
Shortly after the massacre, Biden declared his frustration at yet another mass shooting. The gunman, Robert Card, 40, was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot the night of Oct. 27, two days after the killings.
“Once again, an American community and American families have been devastated by gun violence,” Biden said in the remarks last month. “In all, at least 18 souls brutally slain, more injured, some critically, and scores of family and friends praying and experiencing trauma no one ever wants to imagine.”