The US Congress has repeatedly failed to agree on strict gun rules. (file)
Washington:
US President Joe Biden on Monday vowed to push for a “more rational” approach to gun regulation in the wake of the country’s latest mass shootings.
Biden told reporters in Washington “I’ve always been very motivated” to act on guns. “I’ll keep pushing.”
He continued: “I think things have gotten so bad that everyone is getting more rational about it. That’s my hope.”
A day earlier, the president visited the Texas town of Uvalde, where a teenage gunman shot and killed 19 children and two teachers at his elementary school last week.
The mass shooting was the deadliest school attack since 20 children and six employees were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012.
It came less than two weeks after another mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, where 10 people were killed in an attack allegedly by a white supremacist targeting African Americans.
Congress has repeatedly failed to agree on stricter gun rules despite a grim reoccurrence of mass shootings, but the latest killings in the country’s epidemic of gun violence have sparked a push for new measures.
Prominent lawmakers on Sunday expressed guarded optimism for reform in a country with a thriving gun culture, where guns outnumber people.
Opposition to gun control runs deep among Republicans and some Democrats representing rural states.
“There are more Republicans interested in talking about finding a way forward this time,” Senator Chris Murphy of Democratic Connecticut told local TV on Sunday, adding that “serious talks” were going on with members of both sides.
Biden said on Monday that he is deliberately “not in talks with any Republicans yet.”
“I know what happened when we first took rational action” on gun regulation. “It significantly cut down on mass killings”.
(Except for the title, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)