For the third time in less than three weeks, the President of the United States, Joe Biden, has appeared before his countrymen to speak about the epidemic of armed violence that is sweeping the country. This Thursday, he took the floor in prime time to address the nation in a dramatically staged speech at the White House, announcing a few hours beforehand. The aim was to pressure Congress to “pass common sense laws” to address the problem. Measures such as “the ban on assault weapons and high-performance cartridges” and raising the age for buying guns from 18 to 21. “For heaven’s sake, how much more killing are you willing to tolerate? [los legisladores]?”.
“It’s time for the Senate to do something,” Biden has condemned. “Enough, enough, enough. If Congress doesn’t act, I know this time will be different and the people will take note and vote to remove these politicians from office.”
Biden’s speech came a day after a guy named Michael Louis armed with an AR-15 rifle entered Dr. He blamed the doctor who operated on his back for a pain that had persisted since the surgery. A few hours earlier, Louis had purchased the semi-automatic weapon with which he carried out mass shooting number 233 in the United States that year.
Biden received the report of events Wednesday afternoon shortly after it happened while he was in Washington. When he was aboard Air Force 1 the week before, returning from his first trip to Asia as President, he was aware of the massacre of 19 children between the ages of 8 and 11 and two of their teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde (Texas) by an 18-year-old boy named Salvador Ramos and also armed with a rifle of this type. Appearing upon his landing in the United States, Biden said, “Weapons manufacturers have spent two decades aggressively marketing assault weapons that bring them the most profit.” Then he added, “For heaven’s sake, when are we going to take the gun lobby on?”
Ten days earlier, the President was spending the weekend in his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware, when news broke that another 18-year-old boy, Payton Gendron, had killed 10 African Americans at a popular supermarket in the eastern city of Buffalo, New State York, mostly black. The guy specifically went to this district to sow terror, emboldened by the Great Replacement Theory, a conspiracy that claims whites are being replaced by people of other races as part of a master plan to strip them of their privileged place since enjoyed for centuries. Biden traveled to Buffalo the following Tuesday to comfort victims and explain that “white supremacism is poison.”
According to his staff, the US President had already planned this appearance before the Tulsa tragedy became known and in anticipation of his plans to leave Washington for a few days. On Wednesday, he sounded lukewarm about the prospect of Congress passing new legislation that would tighten controls over the gun trade. With the Senate literally split in half, it seems far from the possibility of Democrats gathering the required 60 votes through filibustering that requires qualified majorities on the broadest issues, though these days are taking place in the Capitol’s promotional meetings.
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“I have served in Congress for 36 years. I’m never quite sure,” Biden said when asked if he thought lawmakers would get a deal this time. “I was not involved in the negotiations that are taking place.”
Shortly before Biden’s appearance on Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi vowed to put several gun control bills to a vote next week, including one that would raise the legal age to purchase an assault rifle from 18 to 21. In the letter she sent to her co-religionists, she admits that there is little chance that these initiatives will remain in the Senate.
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