President Biden on Friday condemned the deadly FedEx rampage that left eight people dead in Indiana as “the latest in a string of tragedies” that have become all “too normal” in the US.
Repeating his call for more weapons control legislation, the president added in the prepared statement, “Gun violence is an epidemic in America.
“But we should not accept it. We must act.”
Biden touched on other recent mass shootings, including in Atlanta, Ga., Boulder, Colo., and Rock Hill, SC.
He ordered flags to fly at half-staff at the White House and elsewhere around the country — “just two weeks after I gave the last such order.
“It’s a mass shooting just a week after we met, in the Rose Garden, with families who lost children and dear friends as bullets pierced their bodies and souls in schools, a nightclub, in a car at a gas station, and a town meeting at a grocery store,” the president said of the prior recent mass shootings.
“And it came just the night before the 14th anniversary of the shooting at Virginia Tech, in which a gunman murdered 32 people.
“Last night and into the morning in Indianapolis, yet again families had to wait to hear word about the fate of their loved ones. What a cruel wait and fate that has become too normal and happens every day somewhere in our nation.”
Biden last week announced a series of executive actions to tighten gun control laws, including instructing the US Department of Justice to soon issue a proposal to undermine the at-home manufacture of so-called “ghost guns,” which can be made with equipment that drills and folds metal parts.
“I also urged Congress to hear the call of the American people — including the vast majority of gun owners — to enact common-sense gun violence prevention legislation, like universal background checks and a ban of weapons of war and high-capacity magazines,” he said in his statement.
Earlier in the day, Vice President Kamala Harris also decried the slaughter in Indianapolis.
“Yet again, we have families in our country that are grieving the loss of their family members because of gun violence,” she told reporters. “There is no question that this violence must end, and we are thinking of the families that lost their loved ones.”
