Biden urges Congress to ban assault weapons amid rampant gun violence

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US President Joe Biden pleaded for lawmakers to pass stricter gun control laws, including a ban on assault weapons, in a bid to clamp down on unprecedented levels of mass shootings across the United States that have been turning American communities into "killing fields".

Biden called on members of Congress to pass tougher laws just a day after a mass shooting in Tulsa, Oklahoma, over a week after a school massacre in Uvalde, Texas, and almost three weeks after a mass shooting in Buffalo, New York City. 

"I know that we can't prevent every tragedy, but here's what I believe we have to do: ban assault weapons and high capacity magazines," Biden told legislators during a 17-minute address at the White House on Thursday night.

"How much more carnage are we willing to accept?" he stressed. "We can't fail the American people again."

The Democrat called on lawmakers to raise - at a minimum - the age at which assault weapons can be purchased from 18 to 21. He highlighted the "unconscionable" fact that the majority of Senate Republicans do not want any of these proposals to be debated or come up for a vote.

Other measures include bolstered background checks, a ban on high-capacity magazines, maintaining safe storage of firearms, and allowing for the liability of gun manufacturers for crimes committed using their products.

"Over the last two decades, more school-age children have died from guns than on-duty police officers and active duty military combined," Biden noted. 

In what seemed like a counter to critics, he underlined his respect for lawful gun owners but said that the second amendment that grants US citizens the right to bear arms was "not absolute".

There have always been limitations to what weapons US civilians can own, Biden noted, such as machine guns, which have been federally regulated for nearly 90 years.

"After Columbine, after Sandy Hook, after Charleston, after Orlando, after Las Vegas, after Parkland — nothing has been done," he said, outlining decades of carelessness from the US government.

Democrats are aware that they risk wasting momentum as the urgency for reforms sparked by mass shootings dies out, but it is difficult for legislation to pass in a Senate split between their party and the GOP, where most bills require at least 60 votes to pass, heavily obstructing wide-ranging reforms.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell claimed that senators were trying to target the problem, but he missed when he said that "mental illness and school safety" were the "cause" instead of the availability of firearms.

House Democrats are nevertheless set to pass a much broader but mainly symbolic "Protecting Our Kids Act" that calls for raising the purchasing age for semi-automatic rifles from 18 to 21 and a ban on high-capacity magazines, which is what Biden is requesting. Whether that bill passes the Senate floor or not is unknown, but it is unlikely that it will with the Republican Party holding 50 of the body's 100 seats.

A shooting took place Wednesday in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and resulted in five deaths, including the gunman. The suspect in the deadly shooting at a hospital campus in Tulsa, Oklahoma, bought his AR-15 style semiautomatic rifle on the day of the massacre to kill Dr. Preston Phillips, whom he blamed for enduring pain, reports say.

An 18-year-old boy carried out a mass shooting on May 24 that claimed the lives of at least 21 people at an elementary school in Texas. He used two weapons, which include an AR15-style automatic rifle manufactured by Daniel Defense. His victims were nineteen students and two teachers.

Another 18-year-old gunman killed ten people and injured three others on May 14 in a supermarket in Buffalo, New York. The FBI qualified the incident as a racially motivated hate crime due to the fact that 11 out of 13 of Grendon's victims were black and varied between shoppers and employees.