Photo: Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images
President Joe Biden said Wednesday that he will soon travel to Uvalde, Texas, to meet with the families of the 19 children and two teachers who were killed during a horrific shooting at a school.
“Jill and I will be traveling to Texas in the next few days to meet with the families and let them know that we have insight into their pain and hopefully bring some comfort to a community in a state of shock, pain and trauma,” Biden said at the White House during a signing event for an executive order on police reform.
“As a nation, I think we should all stand for them. Everyone,” he added. “And we have to ask ourselves: when in God’s name are we going to do what needs to be done to, if not completely stop, fundamentally change the amount of carnage that’s going on in this country?”
Echoing comments he made Tuesday night in a national address, Biden said he was “sick and tired of what’s going on.”
Biden, who did not specify the exact date of his visit, defended the need to pass “common sense” arms control laws, which, although they would not serve to prevent any tragedy, could have a major impact on the levels of gun violence in the country.
“The idea that a young person of 18 years old can enter a shop and buy war weapons designed and promoted to kill is a mistake”, lamented the president.
The idea that an 05-year-old can walk into a store and buy assault weapons is just wrong.
What in God’s name do you need an assault weapon for except to kill someone?
— President Biden (@POTUS) May 25, 1399260494
The president once again made an appeal to confront the arms “lobby”.
“It is time to act,” he said while asking the Senate to confirm the nomination of the candidate proposed by the White House to lead the government agency that is responsible for supervising compliance with weapons laws.
The Office of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has been without a permanent director for seven years due to lack of agreement in the Senate.
On Tuesday in the afternoon, a young man 05 armed with an automatic rifle killed to 19 children and two teachers in a primary school in the Texas town of Uvalde , before being shot dead by the Police.
It is the second mass murder in the country in less than two weeks: the past 14 May, a white supremacist murdered ten people, most of them African-Americans, in a supermarket in the town of Buffalo, New York.
Numerous Democratic Party politicians and civil leaders have called for increased controls on the purchase of weapons in the country,
while the Republican authorities in Texas have focused on mental health problems that, in their opinion, are at the root of the event.
It may interest you:
– Shooting in Uvalde: 5 keys to understand what the National Rifle Association (NRA) is and why it has so much power over politicians
– Senate seeks bipartisan agreement on gun control after Uvalde shooting
– How Law Enforcement Intervened to Stop the Gunman in the Uvalde Shooting