“I hoped, when I became president, I would not have to do this again,” Biden said at the White House, in sometimes halting, emotional remarks. “Another massacre in Uvalde, Texas. An elementary school. Beautiful, innocent second, third and fourth graders.”
“As a nation,” he said, “we have to ask: When are we going to stand up to the gun lobby? When are we going to do what we know in our gut needs to be done?”
Tuesday’s massacre at Robb Elementary School is the latest in a string of mass shootings that have rocked the country. Just 10 days ago, a gunman in Buffalo, New York, opened fire at a supermarket, killing 10 people in a racist attack.
The attack in Uvalde, which is about 80 miles west of San Antonio, is the most deadly US school shooting since a gunman killed 26 people, most of them first-graders, at the Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012.
The shooter, an 18-year-old, was killed Tuesday by responding officers.
Biden was briefed on the Uvalde shooting aboard Air Force One as he returned to Washington from a trip to South Korea and Japan. He ordered US flags to be flown at half-staff through May 28.
With gun control legislation stalled on Capitol Hill, the president has little to offer but yet another call to action and grief for the victims’ families.
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