Biden makes emotional appeal for action on gun violence

US President Joe Biden has made a fervent appeal for lawmakers to pass tougher gun control laws, including a ban on assault weapons, to curb a scourge of mass shootings turning American communities into “killing fields”.
Biden made the 17-minute address – his latest call for tougher firearms measures – with 56 lighted candles arrayed along a long corridor behind him, representing US states and territories suffering from gun violence.
“How much more carnage are we willing to accept?” the president asked in the speech, which he delivered with anger in his voice, and at times dipping close to a whisper.
“We can’t fail the American people again,” he said, condemning the refusal of many Republican senators to support tougher laws as “unconscionable”.
At a minimum, Biden said, lawmakers should raise the age at which assault weapons can be purchased from 18 to 21.
He also urged them to take steps including strengthening background checks, banning high-capacity magazines, mandating safe storage of firearms, and allowing gun manufacturers to be held liable for crimes committed with their products.
“Over the last two decades, more school-age children have died from guns than on-duty police officers and active duty military combined. Think about that,” Biden said.
He highlighted the story of a young student who smeared a dead classmate’s blood on herself to hide from a gunman at a Texas elementary school, saying: “Imagine what it would be like for her to walk down the hallway of any school again.”
“There are too many other schools, too many other everyday places that have become killing fields, battlefields here in America,” Biden said.
The US Constitution’s second amendment protects Americans’ right to bear arms.
Biden said that amendment was not “absolute” while adding that new measures he supported were not aimed at taking away people’s guns.
“After Columbine, after Sandy Hook, after Charleston, after Orlando, after Las Vegas, after Parkland, nothing has been done,” Biden said, ticking off a list of mass shootings over more than two decades. “This time that can’t be true.”
The National Rifle Association (NRA) gun lobby said in a statement that Biden’s proposals would infringe on the rights of law-abiding gun owners.
“This isn’t a real solution, it isn’t true leadership, and it isn’t what America needs,” it said.
As lawmakers mulled a response to the murder of 10 black supermarket shoppers in Buffalo and the school shooting in Texas that killed 19 children and two teachers, another attack took place in Oklahoma on Wednesday.
A man with a pistol and a rifle murdered two doctors, a receptionist and a patient in a Tulsa hospital complex before killing himself as police arrived.
Lawmakers are aware that they risk wasting momentum as the urgency for reforms sparked by the killings dissipates, and another smaller group of senators is holding parallel discussions on expanding background checks on gun sales.
The political challenge of legislating in a 50-50 Senate, where most bills require 60 votes to pass, means that more wide-ranging reforms are unrealistic.
Mitch McConnell, leader of the Senate Republicans, told reporters that senators were trying to “target the problem” – which he said was “mental illness and school safety” rather than the availability of firearms.
House Democrats are nevertheless set to pass a much broader but largely symbolic “Protecting Our Kids Act”, which calls for raising the purchasing age for semi-automatic rifles from 18 to 21 and a ban on high-capacity magazines.
The package will likely pass the Democratic-led House before dying amid Republican opposition in the Senate.
A broad majority of American voters, both Republicans and Democrats, favour stronger gun control laws, but Republicans in Congress and some moderate Democrats have blocked such legislation for years.