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WASHINGTON, May 24 (AP) President Joe Biden will address guns on Wednesday as families and loved ones mourn the unimaginable loss of 19 children and two teachers shot last year in Uvaldi, Texas. The epidemic of violence, gun violence has become the number one killer of children in the United States.
The town plans to hold a private ceremony and candlelight vigil in the evening, and the Texas legislature paused for a moment of silence at 11:30 a.m. CDT, the moment the gunman entered Robb Elementary School last year, sparking the nation’s deadliest school shooting ten years.
White House press secretary Karin Jean-Pierre said Biden would offer support to the families “who will live with the trauma and scars of that day for the rest of their lives.” He urged Republicans to enact gun safety laws.
“We need Congress to enact common-sense policies that Americans support,” she said. “Uvaldi is a tragic reminder of the urgency of passing gun safety legislation.”
Those killings, and another mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, prompted bipartisan legislation, the most important gun safety law in decades, to pass through a divided Congress just a month later.
The law strengthens background checks for the youngest gun buyers and seeks to deter domestic violence criminals from using guns, and helps states enact red flag laws that make it easier for authorities to remove weapons from people judged to be dangerous.
But those laws did nothing to stop mass shootings or the killing of children. Yuvald is still dealing with the aftermath of a poor emergency response to the shooting. Authorities are still investigating in the days following the attack, and have provided inaccurate and conflicting accounts of efforts to stop a teenage shooter armed with an AR-style rifle.
A damning report by Texas lawmakers found that nearly 400 officials from federal, state and local agencies were present at the scene. Heavily armed police officers waited more than an hour before confronting and killing the 18-year-old gunman, according to the findings. It also accused police of failing to “put saving innocent lives above their own safety”.
All the students who died were between the ages of 9 and 11.
A few months later, the new federal law had some success: The FBI stepped up background checks, blocked gun sales to 119 buyers under the age of 21, increased prosecutions of unlicensed gun sellers, and, at least nationwide, 30 cases. Millions of dollars in new funding went to mental health services for children and schools.
However, since the bill was signed last summer, the number of mass shootings in the United States has only increased.
Five people died at a nightclub in Colorado. Eleven people were killed at a dance hall in California. Three 9-year-olds and three adults were shot dead at an elementary school in Nashville, Tennessee. Seven people have been shot dead in rural Oklahoma. As of earlier this month, 97 people had been killed in 19 mass killings this year, surpassing the previous record of 93 killed in 17 incidents set in late April 2009.
Guns are the number one killer of children in the United States, killing 85 children under age 11 and 491 children ages 12 to 17 so far this year. As of 2020, the firearm death rate19 for children under 11 is 5.6 per 100,000. The next comparable is Canada with .08 deaths per 100,000 people. (Associated Press)
(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)
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