President Biden addressed the White House on Thursday, urging Congress to take several measures to control weapons after a series of recent mass shootings. The following is a transcript of his remarks from The New York Times.
Remembrance Day, last Monday, Jill and I visited Arlington National Cemetery. When we entered these sacred places, we saw rows and rows of crosses among the rows of tombstones and other emblems of the faith, in honor of those who paid the highest price on battlefields around the world.
The previous day we visited Uwalde – Uwalde, Texas. In front of Rob Elementary School we stood in front of 21 crosses, for 19 third and fourth graders and two teachers. Each cross has a name.
And nearby, a picture of every victim Jill and I reached out to touch. Innocent victims killed in a classroom turned into a murder field. Standing there in this small town, like so many other communities in America, I couldn’t help but think that there are too many other schools, too many other everyday places that have become battlefields, battlefields here in America .
We were at such a place just 12 days ago, opposite a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, commemorating 10 Americans – a husband, parent, grandmother, grandfather, brother and sister who disappeared forever. In both places, we spent hours with hundreds of family members who were broken up and whose lives will never be the same. They had a message for all of us: Do something. Just do something. For God’s sake, do something.
After Columbine, after Sandy Hook, after Charleston, after Orlando, after Las Vegas, after Parkland, nothing was done. This time this may not be true. This time we really need to do something. The problem we face is related to conscience and common sense.
For so many of you at home, I want to be very clear. This is not about confiscating someone’s weapons. This is not about denigrating gun owners. In fact, we believe that we should treat responsible gun owners as an example of how every gun owner should behave.
I respect the culture and tradition and the concerns of the legitimate owners of weapons. At the same time, the Second Amendment, like all other rights, is not absolute. Judge Scalia wrote, and I quote: “Like most rights, the right Second Amendment – the rights granted by the Second Amendment are not unlimited.” It is not unlimited. It’s never been.
There have always been restrictions on what weapons you can own in America. For example, machine guns have been federally regulated for nearly 90 years and it is still a free country. This is not about taking away someone’s rights. It is about protecting children. It’s about protecting families. It is about protecting entire communities. It is about protecting our freedom to go to school, to a grocery store, to a church, without being shot or killed.
According to new data just released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, guns are the number one killer of children in the United States. The killer number 1. More than car crashes, more than cancer. In the last two decades, more school-age children have died from guns than police and military on duty combined.
Think about it. More children than on-duty cops killed by guns. More children than soldiers killed by guns. God. How many more carnage are we ready to accept? How many more innocent American lives must be taken before we can say enough? Enough.
I know we can’t prevent every tragedy, but here’s what I believe we need to do. This is what they believe the vast majority of the American people must do. Here is what the families in Buffalo and Uwalde, Texas, told us we should do.
We must ban assault weapons and high-capacity cartridges. And if we can’t ban assault weapons, then we need to raise the age of purchase from 18 to 21. Strengthen past checks, pass safekeeping laws and red flag laws. Abolish the immunity that protects gun manufacturers from liability. Deal with the mental health crisis that exacerbates the trauma of gun violence and the consequences of it.
These are rational, reasonable measures. Here’s what it all means. All this means is this: we need to restore the ban on assault weapons for high-capacity magazines, which we adopted in 1994 with the support of both parties in Congress and the support of law enforcement.
Nine categories of semi-automatic weapons were included in this ban, such as the AK-47 and AR-15. And in the 10 years that the law was in place, mass shootings declined. But after Republicans allowed the law to expire in 2004 and those weapons were allowed to be sold again, the mass shootings tripled. These are the facts.
A few years ago, the family of the inventor of the AR-15 said they would be horrified to know that its design was used to slaughter children and other innocent lives instead of being used as a military weapon on battlefields, as it was. designed. That’s what it’s designed for.
Enough enough. We need to limit how many rounds a weapon can hold. Why on earth should an ordinary citizen be able to buy an assault weapon that contains 30 rounds of ammunition that allows mass shooters to fire hundreds of bullets in minutes? The damage was so devastating in Uwalde, parents had to make DNA swabs to identify the remains of their children. Children aged 9 and 10.
Enough. We need to expand the scrutiny of the past to keep weapons out of the hands of criminals, fugitives and people with restraining orders. Tighter inspections are something that the vast majority of Americans, including the majority of gun owners, agree with.
I also believe that we should have laws for safe storage and personal responsibility for not locking your gun. The shooter in Sandy Hook came from a house full of weapons. They were too easy to access. That’s how he got his weapons. The weapon with which he killed his mother and then 26 people, including 20 first-graders.
If you own a weapon, you have a responsibility to secure it. Every responsible gun owner agrees. To make sure no one else has access to it. To lock it. Have trigger locks. And if you don’t do it and something bad happens, you have to take responsibility.
We must also have national red flag laws so that a parent, teacher, counselor can signal to the court that a child, student, patient is showing violent tendencies, threatening classmates or experiencing suicide – making them a danger to themselves or to others. Nineteen states and the District of Columbia have red flag laws. Delaware’s law is named after my son, Attorney General Bo Biden.
Fort Hood, Texas, 2009. Thirteen killed and more than 30 injured. Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, 2018. Seventeen killed, 17 injured. In both places countless others suffering from invisible wounds. The red flag laws could have stopped both archers.
In Uwalde, the shooter was 17 when he asked his sister to buy him an assault weapon, knowing he would be refused because he was too young to buy it himself. She refused. But as soon as he turned 18, he bought two assault weapons for himself. Because in Texas, you can be 18 and buy an assault weapon, even though you can’t buy a gun in Texas until you’re 21.
If we can’t ban weapons of attack properly, we need to at least raise the age so we can buy one at 21. Look, I know some people will say that 18-year-olds can serve in the military and fire those. weapons, but this is under the training and supervision of the best trained experts in the world. Don’t tell me that raising the age won’t change. Enough.
We need to abolish the shield of responsibility that often protects arms manufacturers from prosecuting the death and destruction caused by their weapons. They are the only industry in this country that has such immunity.
Imagine. Imagine if the tobacco industry was immune to a lawsuit against where we would be today. The special defenses of the arms industry are outrageous. It has to end.
And let there be no mistake about the psychological trauma that gun violence leaves behind. Imagine you are that little girl, that brave little girl in Uwalde who smeared blood on the body of her murdered friend on her own face, lying motionless among the corpses in her classroom and pretending to be dead in order to stay alive. Imagine. Imagine what it would be like for her to walk down the hallway of a school again.
Imagine what it’s like for children to experience this kind of trauma every day at school, on the streets, in communities across America. Imagine having so many parents hugging their children goodbye in the morning without being sure if they will return home. Unfortunately, too many people don’t have to imagine this at all.
Even before the pandemic, young people were already in pain. There is a serious crisis in the mental health of young people in this country. We need to do something about it. That is why mental health is at the heart of my unity program, which I set out in this year’s State of the Union address.
We need to provide more school counselors; more school nurses; more mental health services for students and teachers. More people volunteering as mentors to help young people succeed. More privacy protection and resources to protect children from the harms of social media.
This unity program will not completely heal wounded souls, but it will help. It matters.
I just told you what I’m going to do. The question now is: What will Congress do?
The House of Representatives has already adopted the key measures we need: Expand controls to cover almost all arms sales, including arms shows and online sales. Let’s get rid of a loophole that allows the sale of weapons to take place after three working days, even if the inspection is not completed.
And the House is planning even more action next week. Requirements for safe storage. The ban on high-capacity magazines. Raise the age of purchase of weapons of attack to 21. Federal Red Flag Act.
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