President Joe Biden arrived at the White House at 7:18 PM ET Tuesday evening after a five day trip to Asia. About 75 minutes later he stood before television cameras in the Roosevelt Room and asked America, “When in God’s name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby?”
As the President made his way on Air Force One back to the United States he was confronted with the news that multiple elementary school children – first reported as two, then 14, and now 18 – along with at least one teacher, had been gunned down in yet another mass shooting, this time at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.
“I’d hoped, when I became president, I would not have to do this again. Another massacre at a Texas elementary school. Beautiful, innocent second, third, fourth graders,” President Biden, clearly emotional and choked up, announced. “As a nation, we have to ask: 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?”
Just ten days earlier a gunman, an avowed white supremacist and antisemite, shot and killed 10 Black people in a local Buffalo grocery store.
“I am sick and tired of it. We have to act. And don’t tell me we can’t have an impact on this carnage,” he said. “For God’s sake, we have to have the courage to stand up to the industry.”
President Biden added, “if an 18-year-old can walk into a gun store and buy two assault weapons, it’s just wrong. What in God’s name do you need an assault weapon for except to kill someone? Deer aren’t running through the forests with kevlar vests on, for God’s sake. It’s just sick.”
“Why are we willing to live with this carnage?”