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President Joe Biden said Tuesday that there is nothing more he can do with his executive power about the gun controlbut pleaded with Congress to pass stricter legislation, after a massacre occurred in Nashville, Tennesseewhich left 7 dead, including three children and the shooter responsible for the massacre.
Speaking to reporters before leaving Washington, DC, for North Carolina, President Biden said he has exhausted his ability to counter gun violence through executive order and said that “Congress has to act.”
“I have used the full extent of my executive authority to do anything gun-related on my own,” Biden said. “I can’t do anything except plead with Congress to act,” he added.
During a speech Tuesday afternoon in Durham, President Biden explained what the country must do in the wake of the deadly shooting in Tennessee, saying that the nation owes more to the parents of children lost to gun violence than just “our prayers.”
Biden sought to shift the burden onto senators and congressional representatives who have so far refused to act on proposing measures to control mass shootings in the United States.
Biden’s comments came a day after a female shooter armed with two AR-style high-powered weapons and a pistol killed three student children and three adults at a private Christian school in Nashville.
Police identified the shooter as Audrey Elizabeth Hale, 28, of Nashville. Hale was shot and killed by police who responded to the Covenant School, a small academy housed inside a Presbyterian church that serves about 200 students from preschool through sixth grade.
John Drake, chief of the Nashville Metropolitan Police Department, said that law enforcement officers were working to determine the motive and that Hale had attended school. A “manifesto” and maps for the school were recovered from Hale’s home, Drake said.
Police identified the victims as Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs and William Kinney, all 9, Cynthia Peak, 61, Katherine Koonce, 60 and Mike Hill, 61. Koonce was the principal of the school in Covenant, according to the school’s website.
Biden noted that most gun owners in the United States agree the country needs stricter gun control laws.
The president noted that bipartisan work on gun control is possible, referring to a gun control law passed last year that received bipartisan support in Congress.
While that measure was the most important bill of its kind passed in three decades, Biden admitted Tuesday that it doesn’t achieve everything he wants on gun control. Biden said that while there is still more to learn about the Nashville shooting, there is a lot that “we all know”: that this is the “worst nightmare” for a family.
As a nation, we owe these families more than our prayers. We owe them action.”
Joe Biden, President of the United States
The president reminded the crowd that he is a “Second Amendment guy” who owns two shotguns. Even so, he believes there should be a limit on the type of weapons Americans can own. “Everybody thinks that in some way the Second Amendment is absolute,” Biden said.
“You are not allowed to have a machine gun. You are not allowed to have a flamethrower. You are not allowed so many other things. Why, in the name of God, do we allow these weapons of war on our streets and in our schools?
Biden thus renewed on Tuesday the same request he made to Congress on Monday in the wake of the Nashville shooting, urging lawmakers in both houses of Congress to do more to prevent mass shootings in the United States.
Biden confirmed that he is considering visiting Nashville to meet with community members as they recover from this tragedy.
Keep reading:
• 7 dead in school shooting in Nashville, Tennessee, including female shooter
• School shooting in Nashville, Tennessee, leaves several victims, authorities report
• Perpetrator of the Nashville school shooting was 28 years old