A grief-stricken President Joe Biden addressed the nation Tuesday night as though he were experiencing the fresh pain of losing two of his own children, a feeling he said was like “having a piece of your soul ripped away.”
Appearing near tears, the president talked about the parents of the 18 elementary schoolers shot dead in Texas on Tuesday, how they will never cuddle with their children again, how the surviving classmates saw their friends murdered, “as if they’re on a battlefield, for God’s sake.”
Then Biden’s exhausted figure, strained from the physical ordeal of a 17-hour flight from East Asia and the horrific news of the shooting rampage in Uvalde, straightened into anger and resolve.
“As a nation, we have to ask ourselves: When in God’s name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby? When in God’s name will we do what we all know in our gut needs to be done?” Biden said in remarks in the Roosevelt Room, his wife Jill standing to the side.
Biden noted that there have been more than 900 incidents of gunfire at schools since the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary nearly a decade ago, when the then-vice president watched President Barack Obama deliver a tearful appeal for action on guns.
“I am sick and tired of it. We have to act,” Biden said. “And don’t tell me we can’t have an impact on this carnage,” the president added, noting his work as a U.S. senator in getting a ban on assault weapons passed. After that law was passed, mass shooting deaths dropped, but went up again after the ban was lifted, he said.
“These kinds of shootings rarely happen anywhere else in the world,” even though other countries have citizens with mental illness or in homes with domestic abuse.
“Why? Why are we willing to live with this carnage? Where in God’s name is our backbone, to have the courage to deal with it and stand up to the lobbies?” Biden said. “It’s time to turn this pain into action.”
Any action to limit guns or to make it harder to get them faces a high hurdle in Congress, where many lawmakers are either strong Second Amendment supporters or are in states and districts targeted by the powerful National Rifle Association lobby.
After other mass shootings, Congress has been unable to pass even mild rules for guns – such as universal background checks. And the issue has increasingly become a defining political line for Democrats and the Republicans who hope to take their majorities back this fall.
Reaction from lawmakers followed a similar pattern to the aftermath of so many previous mass shootings in America. Republicans expressed their sadness, with many calling the killing of 14 children and a teacher “heartbreaking.” But they did not suggest any kind of restrictions on guns or the people who own them.
“An absolutely heartbreaking tragedy. Praying for the people of Uvalde after this senseless act of violence,” Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel tweeted.
“Horrified and heartbroken by reports of the disgusting violence directed at innocent schoolkids in Uvalde, Texas. The entire country is praying for the children, families, teachers, and staff and the first responders on the scene,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican, said in a statement.
“He probably put out the same statement after my daughter was killed,” Fred Gutenberg, father of a girl killed at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, said on MSNBC.
Democrats demanded action with the same passion displayed after previous mass shootings, but accompanied by the recognition that their GOP colleagues (and some Democrats) would not take the politically dangerous action of changing gun laws.
Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy, recalling the Sandy Hook rampage in his home state of Connecticut, was overcome with grief and frustration as he spoke on the Senate floor.
“I’m here on this floor to beg – to literally get down on my hands and knees to beg my colleagues – find a path forward here,” Murphy said. “Work with us to find ways to pass laws that make this less likely,” the Democratic lawmaker said, standing in a chamber where just nine days previous, lawmakers called for action after a man was charged with the racist shooting of 10 Black shoppers at a supermarket in a heavily African American neighborhood in Buffalo.
“What are we doing?” Murphy said. “Why do you spend all this time running for the United States Senate … if your answer is that – as the slaughter increases, as our kids run for their lives – we do nothing? What are we doing? Why are you here?”
His fellow Democrat, Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, laid the blame for gun violence at the feet of GOP colleagues who Reed said refused to take on the powerful National Rifle Association.
“This was another preventable mass shooting. When will my colleagues on the Republican side provide some votes to protect America’s kids? Columbine, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook, Parkland and too many others,” Reed said in a statement, referencing the sites of horrific mass shootings at schools across America.
“It is sickening, and it happens because no one on the other side of the aisle is willing to step up and even try to stop it by strengthening background checks and other common-sense measures.”
That entreaty is not expected to be heeded in Texas, which has some of the loosest gun rules in the nation. A law passed last year allows Texans over 21 to carry handguns, open or concealed, without a license, a state background check or training – as long as they are not otherwise prohibited from owning a firearm because of a felony or domestic violence conviction.
Gov. Greg Abbott, who celebrated last year’s law by saying he “instilled freedom in the Lone Star State,” said Tuesday that Texas joins the families of the dead children in mourning their loss after the shooter “horrifically, incomprehensibly” went on a rampage. He did not suggest any restrictions on guns.
Sen. Ted Cruz, Texas Republican, said the solution was to keep guns out of the hands of felons and criminals.
“Inevitably when there’s a murderer of this kind, you see politicians try to politicize it, you see Democrats and a lot of folks in the media whose immediate solution is to try to restrict the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens,” Cruz told the cable network Spectrum News.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton told Newsmax that one solution was to arm teachers, since first responders could not get to a mass shooting in time to intervene.
Abbott, Cruz and GOP Sen. John Cornyn of Texas are scheduled to appear at a forum of the NRA’s annual meeting in Houston on Friday. Former President Donald Trump is headlining the event.
