White House on mass shootings in US: ‘This is a crisis’
Washington, May 8 (EFE).- The White House said two days after a mass shooting at a shopping mall in Texas that left eight dead, including three children, that the United States is facing a crisis of gun violence.
“It is the 128th day of 2023, and yesterday, according to leading counts, we witnessed the 201st mass shooting in this country this year. That means we are averaging more than one a day,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Monday at her daily press conference.
“Credible estimates show that more than 14,000 people have died this year from gun violence,” she added.
“This is a crisis. It is a crisis that the Republicans in Congress are refusing to address. We are talking about the No. 1 killer of kids in America, and Republicans in Congress are saying there is nothing that we can do about it,” Jean-Pierre said.
She recalled that President Joe Biden on Sunday urged Congress to pass a bill that bans assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, enacts universal background checks, requires safe storage and ends immunity for gun manufacturers.
Passage of such a bill is unrealistic at this time because most Republicans, who currently control the lower house of Congress, oppose stricter gun-control measures as an unconstitutional infringement on individual rights.
On Saturday, a gunman killed eight people and injured seven others when he opened fire with an AR-15-style rifle at a outdoor shopping mall in Allen, Texas, a suburb of Dallas. The assailant was shot dead at the scene by a police officer.
Six mass shootings (defined as those in which four or more people – excluding the perpetrator – are shot at roughly the same time and location) occurred over the weekend in the US, including the one in Allen, according to the Gun Violence Archive organization. EFE
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