Biden statement on rampage
Also children among the dead of Texas
05/07/2023, 8:15 p.m
Several people are killed again in a shooting spree in the United States. President Biden is now speaking with a statement and provides more detailed information about the victims.
Children have died in a Texas shopping mall shooting. US President Joe Biden said in a written statement that children were among the eight fatalities. He did not provide details on the number of underage victims or their age. Police in Allen, a Dallas suburb, did not provide any further information about the eight fatalities, such as their ages, after the shooting attack on Saturday. The local authorities have also left many other questions unanswered so far, especially about the perpetrator and his equipment.
Biden wrote in his statement that the attacker shot innocent people “in tactical gear and with an AR-15 assault rifle”. Something like this hadn’t happened for the first time. This year alone there have already been dozens of killing sprees and fatal shootings in the United States. “The leading cause of death for American children is gun violence,” he lamented. A police officer shot and killed the attacker at the Texas mall on Saturday.
Once again, Biden called on the Republicans in Congress to give up their blockade against tightening gun laws in the country and to allow a ban on assault rifles, for example. “The Republican members of Congress can no longer shrug off this epidemic,” the President said. Sending thoughts and prayers to the affected families on Twitter is not enough.
48,000 deaths a year
The United States has long faced levels of gun violence that are difficult to comprehend. Rampages and deadly shootouts are part of everyday life. In 2021, around 48,000 people died from gun-related injuries, according to the Pew Research Center. According to this, more than half of the deaths (about 26,000 or 54 percent) were due to suicides. 43 percent were homicides, with the rest due to gun-handling accidents and fatal police shots.
Republicans have been preventing a substantial tightening of gun laws for years. They refer to the second amendment to the constitution, which dates from the revolutionary period at the end of the 18th century. The article specifically allows gun ownership. According to Pew, more than half of Americans support stricter gun laws.
At the end of June last year, a new law came into force that was considered the biggest innovation in gun law for almost 30 years. It makes it easier for people to take weapons that could be a danger to themselves or others. In addition, 18- to 21-year-old gun buyers can be screened more extensively – the special thing about it was that the law also received the approval of Republican MPs.
2023-05-07 20:00:11
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