Manuel Oliver lost his son Joaquin, killed four years ago today in the Parkland shootings in Florida.
The father of a student fatally shot in 2018, in one of the worst school shootings to mourn the United States, climbed to the top of a crane near the White House on Monday to call on Joe Biden to act against guns fire.
“45,000 people have been killed by firearms since you assumed responsibility” for the country, read a large banner suspended by Manuel Oliver from a construction crane in the center of the capital, with a drawing of his son Joaquin, killed four years ago to the day.
One of the worst school massacres
On February 14, 2018, Valentine’s Day, a former student of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida entered the facility with a semi-automatic rifle, killing 17 people and injuring 15 others. , in what was one of the worst school massacres in the United States.
At the foot of the crane very close to the White House, Joaquin’s mother confided that she still felt “pain, everywhere”, that of her dead son. But “it pushes us to do something” against firearms, said Patricia Oliver, as her husband began his descent from the structure. He was then arrested by the police.
“We show this to the President, because we need him to take action,” she added, “we need actions that actually work.”
Joe Biden ‘not up to the job’ on guns?
In December, the couple had spent three weeks in front of the White House to ask for an appointment with Joe Bien – they were finally able to meet only an adviser, “but since then nothing has happened”.
With this action is launched a campaign, “Shock market”, which must “show in real time how many people are dying in America due to gun violence”, continued Patricia Oliver.
“President Biden has failed to live up to the firearms reforms he promised during his campaign,” denounces “Shock Market” on its website.
For its part, the White House published a statement Monday morning in which Joe Biden “prays” for the victims and their families. “We remember those lost in Parkland, and we stand with Americans in every corner of the country who have lost loved ones to gun violence,” a “pandemic,” the statement added.
The Parkland attack had sparked a historic anti-gun protest movement in the United States, led by young people, without this being translated into strong measures at the federal legislative level, in particular because of the influence of the gun lobby in Congress.
Apart from a few peripheral initiatives led by his administration, the Democratic president has therefore for the moment disappointed the militants in favor of a reinforced framework for firearms, by failing to pass a major law since his arrival in power.
Original article published on BFMTV.com
VIDEO – In New York, Biden campaigns against firearms
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