President Joe Biden said the firearms industry and Republican lawmakers bear responsibility for the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, where 19 children and two adults were killed Tuesday.
Speaking in the Roosevelt Room of the White House shortly after returning from a tour of Japan and South Korea, Biden said schoolchildren in America are “living in a battlefield” because of the availability of firearms. “When in God’s name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby?” he said.
Biden cited several mass shootings in schools across the U.S. in his remarks, including at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in 2012, which he visited as vice president. He also referred to his visit to Buffalo, N.Y., where on May 14, another 18-year-old high school student has been arrested for allegedly killing ten patrons at a supermarket.
During his appearance in Buffalo, Biden said there was not much he could do via executive action to limit people’s access to guns. On Tuesday, he said members of Congress need to pursue legislation to do so. “We have to act now!” Biden said.
His comments were echoed by scores of other Democratic officials who delivered statements on the Texas shooting. Senator Chris Murphy (D., Conn.), who represented Connecticut during the Newtown shooting, got down on his knees during a Senate floor speech on Tuesday afternoon to plead for gun-control legislation. “What are we doing?” Murphy asked senators. Vice President Kamala Harris, speaking earlier in the day, said “enough is enough,” adding that the alleged “nexus” between mass shootings and gun access needs to be understood.
Other comments, including by former NBA player and current Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr, blamed Republican lawmakers for not supporting H.R. 8, a bill passed by the Democratic-led House of Representatives to increase the strictness of background checks. Separately, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) announced that he would bring two bills to a vote with similar proposals by Thursday.
In his remarks, Biden specifically called for restricting so-called assault weapons. “When the assault-weapons ban came in, mass shootings went down. When it expired, they went up by three times,” Biden claimed. Most research by social scientists has found that the Federal Assault Weapons Ban, part of major criminal-justice legislation sponsored by Biden while he was a senator, had no effect on homicides during the decade it was in effect, from 1994 to 2004. The ban outlawed certain semiautomatic rifles and magazines holding more than ten rounds. The U.S. Department of Justice, meanwhile, says its effect was “unclear.”
Biden said such weapons are unnecessary and only exist “to kill people.” There are no “deer in the forests with Kevlar vests,” Biden added, as he accused the firearms industry of profiteering from assault-weapon sales.
He also suggested that the now-deceased shooter, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, “walked into a store and bought two assault weapons.” As of this writing, Texas law enforcement has not confirmed the source of the guns used by Ramos, nor confirmed that “assault weapons” were used. Earlier on Tuesday, Texas governor Greg Abbott said the shooter used a handgun and that a semiautomatic rifle may have been involved.
Biden delivered a pointed message to lawmakers who have voted against his administration’s gun initiatives. “We will not forget,” he said. In calling for Americans to pray for the victims and their families, Biden said of gun restrictions that “we can do so much more and have to do more.”