U.S. President Joe Biden speaks concerning the Supreme Court’s decision overruling student debt forgiveness within the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., June 30, 2023.
Jim Watson | AFP | Getty Images
President Joe Biden on Tuesday again called for stricter gun control, including a ban on semi-automatic rifles, after several deadly “tragic and senseless shootings” leading as much as the July Fourth holiday.
At the least 10 people were killed in mass shootings in Baltimore Philadelphia, and Fort Price, Texas. The incidents — in addition to others in Wichita, Kansas, and Lansing, Michigan — left dozens of others injured.
A string of shootings in Chicago over the vacation weekend killed five and left at the very least 30 more wounded, NBC Chicago reports.
“It’s inside our power to once more ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, to require protected storage of guns, to finish gun manufacturers’ immunity from liability, and to enact universal background checks,” Biden said in a statement on Tuesday.
His comments come one 12 months after a mass shooting at a Highland Park, Illinois, Fourth of July parade that killed seven people and wounded nearly 50 others.
In January, Illinois banned the sale of semi-automatic weapons and high-capacity magazines.
“As now we have seen over the previous couple of days, way more should be done in Illinois and across America to handle the epidemic of gun violence that’s tearing our communities apart,” Biden said.
There have been 346 mass shootings to this point this 12 months within the U.S., based on the Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass shooting as an incident by which 4 or more persons are shot or killed, excluding the shooter.