President Joe Biden is encouraging the nation to turn its “pain into action” following yesterday’s mass shooting which took the lives of at least 19 children and two teachers at a Texas elementary school.
“I had hoped when I became president I would not have to do this — again,” said Biden alongside his wife, Jill Biden, a longtime teacher. “Another massacre. Uvalde, Texas. An elementary school. Beautiful, innocent second, third and fourth graders. And how many scores of little children who witnessed what happened — see their friends die, as if they’re in a battlefield, for God’s sake. They’ll live with it the rest of their lives.”
Yesterday, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos entered Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas and opened fire killing at least 19 students and two teachers before he was fatally shot by responding officers.
The mass shooting comes less than two weeks after the tragedy that took the lives of 10 people who were shopping in a Buffalo grocery store on a Saturday (May 14) evening.
It’s been a total of 3,448 days since the Sandy Hook shooting that took the lives of 26 people, including 20 first graders during the Obama presidency in 2012. At the time, Biden served as the nation’s vice president.
“As a nation, we have to ask, when in God’s name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby?” Biden questioned. “When in God’s name will we do what we all know in our gut needs to be done?”
He also encouraged Congress to take action to pass “common sense gun laws.”
“We can’t and won’t prevent every tragedy. But we know they work, and have a positive impact,” he continued. “The idea that an 18-year-old kid can walk into a gun store and buy two assault weapons is just wrong.”
Before Biden took a moment to address the nation, Vice President Kamala Harris said that “enough is enough,” noting that “our hearts keep getting broken.”