Biden marks Uvalde anniversary with renewed call to ‘do something’

President Biden, in a somber speech evoking the pain of the deaths of two of his own children, pleaded with Congress on Wednesday to “please do something” to stop the flow of guns involved in mass shootings like the school massacre involving 19 children and two teachers a year ago in Uvalde, Texas.

On the anniversary of the murders, Biden again called for tougher gun laws, including a ban on assault weapons like those used by the killer in Uvalde. But he implicitly recognized that such gun laws were unlikely to be passed any time soon, and he did not come up with new ideas to overcome entrenched opposition.

“How many more parents will live their worst nightmare before we rise up against the gun lobby?” asked the president during a short speech at the White House, flanked by the first lady, Jill Biden, and standing in front of 21 lighted candles honoring the victims. “It’s time to act, it’s time to act,” he added. “It’s time to make our voices heard, not as Democrats or as Republicans, but as friends, as neighbors, as parents, as fellow Americans.”

With a nod to the political realities of a Congress heavily influenced by gun rights activists and to the frustrations of many families of the dead, he said: “I know it has been difficult for a long time to make progress. But there comes a time when our voices are so loud, our determination so clear, that we can no longer be held back. We will act.”

Mr Biden’s statement came a year after a gunman stormed into Robb Elementary School in the small Texas town of Uvalde and opened fire on a fourth-grade class in one of the deadliest campus attacks in US history. More than 370 police officers responded, but failed to confront the gunman for 77 minutes. School and police officers later lost their jobs, and the school district dismantled the police force altogether. The school building is slated to be demolished.

But the slaughter did little to move lawmakers at the state or national level. While a Texas legislative committee brought forward a bill raising the age for buying an AR-15 style rifle from 18 to 21, the bill never got a vote on the House floor. The state also stopped defending in court a higher age requirement for carrying a gun, effectively lowering the age for carrying a gun from 21 to 18.

Congress passed legislation with modest changes, improved background checks for gun buyers under the age of 21, increased funds for mental health crisis intervention, strengthened laws against straw purchases, and encouraged states to enact red flag laws authorizing the government to temporarily remove weapons from anyone deemed likely to pose a danger to themselves or others. Mr Biden signed those measures into law.

In his statement on Wednesday, Mr Biden said the legislation did not go far enough and again called on Congress to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, impose universal background checks, require safe storage of firearms, raise a national red flag law and eliminate immunity from liability for the arms industry.

The National Rifle Association has opposed such laws, calling them part of a larger campaign by leftist politicians to undermine the Second Amendment and ultimately take guns away from law-abiding citizens.

“Police officers, media outlets and activists who hate guns brand law-abiding Americans crazy if we even begin to suggest that their end goal is confiscation.” wrote the group on Twitter this week, citing a White House post on that platform advocating a ban on assault weapons. “They’re yelling, ‘Nobody’s coming for your guns!’ However, today’s White House tweet calling for widespread gun bans contradicts this.”

During his speech at the White House, Mr. Biden personally addressed the loved ones of the dead in Uvalde. “To the families of the kids and educators, we know it’s still so raw for you a year later,” Mr Biden said. “A year of missed birthdays and holidays, school plays, football games, just that smile. A year of everyday joy is gone forever. The curve of his smile, the perfect pitch of her laugh.

He made it clear he was speaking from experience and later alluded to his traumas as a parent losing his first wife and 1-year-old daughter in a car accident in 1972 and then his adult son Beau Biden to cancer in 2015.

“While everyone’s pain is different, we’d like many of you to have some understanding of what it’s like to lose a child — on more than one occasion,” he said. “For those who have lost a loved one in Uvalde, for the moms and dads, the brothers, the sisters, the grandmothers, the grandpas, this is what I know,” he said. “They will never leave your heart, they will always be a part of you.”