US President Joe Biden has expressed outrage at the death of six people — including a child — who were shot at a birthday party and a park, blasting rival Republican national leaders for collaborating with the nation’s gun lobby to “further erode gun safety.”
“Guns are the leading killer of children in America, and the numbers are rising – not declining,” Biden said in a statement released Sunday by the White House.
“What has our nation come to when children cannot attend a birthday party without fear? When parents have to worry every time their kids walk out the door to school, to the movie theater, or to the park?” he asked, referring to the weekend’s killings in southern, Republican-controlled states of Alabama and Kentucky.
Four people were reported killed and at least 20 more injured in a shooting Saturday night in the small town of Dadeville, Alabama.
The shooting occurred within weeks of two high-profile mass shootings in the nearby states of Tennessee and Kentucky, prompting local leaders to — once again — call for tighter gun control measures last week without any meaningful efforts to push for legislation towards upholding such pledges.
In other recent mass shootings in the area, a bank employee shot dead five colleagues and wounded nine other people at his workplace in Louisville, Kentucky last week and on March 27, three 9-year-olds and three staff members were gunned down at a private Christian school in Nashville, Tennessee, by a former student.
“This is outrageous and unacceptable,” Biden underlined in his statement. “Americans agree and want lawmakers to act on commonsense gun safety reforms.”
“This past week Americans saw national Republican elected leaders stand alongside the NRA in a race to the bottom on dangerous laws that further erode gun safety,” he said referring to the powerful pro-gun lobby, the National Rifle Association.
Biden concluded what amounts to yet another publicity stunt on gun safety by insisting, “It is within Congress’ power to require safe storage of firearms, require background checks for all gun sales, eliminate gun manufacturers’ immunity from liability, and ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines – and this should happen without delay.”
Such rhetoric against free possession of firearms has repeatedly been uttered by Biden and other elected officials across the US, without much effort to enact laws that would effectively prevent public access to military-style firearms.
Meanwhile, the NRA remains a very active and politically powerful lobby group in the United States, using negative campaign tactics to ensure legislators fully understand that their participation in any moves to pass any gun-safety legislation will have severe consequences and may spell the end their political career.