On the anniversary of the Uvalde tragedy, President Biden advocates for more gun control laws and pledges to safeguard lives

The first substantial federal guns legislation in over three decades, according to President Joe Biden, was passed a year ago on Friday, but he called it simply a “important first step” and passionately advocated for stricter gun laws. He asked voters to remove MPs who would not cooperate.

Praying is acceptable. They’re vital, but they won’t stop it,” Biden said, urging Congress to act more forcefully to limit access to firearms. “You need to do something. You must move. You must take action.

“We need a new Congress if this one doesn’t act,” the president said.

At a gun safety meeting in Connecticut, where many victims’ relatives and survivors of gun violence were present, Biden praised the attendees for turning “your pain into purpose” and pledged to continue advocating for stricter regulations.

He spoke on the first anniversary of last year’s gun control law, which was enacted a few weeks after a shooter in Uvalde, Texas, killed 19 elementary school students and two instructors. Less than an hour’s drive from Hartford, 26 students and employees were slain in the Sandy Hook school shooting ten years before.

The bill passed last year strengthened background checks for the smallest gun purchasers, tried to prevent domestic abusers from obtaining guns, and assisted states in establishing red flag laws that made it simpler to take weapons away from persons deemed dangerous.

Biden listed various areas in which, in his opinion, the 2022 legislation had already had an effect.

Stepped-up More than 200 attempted purchases by buyers under the age of 21 have been thwarted by FBI background checks. Unlicensed gun dealers are now subject to additional prosecutions, and more than 100 cases throughout the nation have seen the imposition of new gun trafficking sanctions. The number of people who are prosecuted for illegally selling weapons has risen.

Biden said that lives would have been spared if the legislation had been in place a year earlier.

Additionally, he mentioned clauses that boosted financing for safety measures and mental health services as well as the improved background checks for purchasers under the age of 21. He renewed his calls for the prohibition of so-called assault weapons and comprehensive background checks for all buyers.

These are components of a political programme for 2024 that, during the presidency of Barack Obama, was almost unimaginable among Democrats.

Major gun safety organisations and U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., organised the rally on Friday in an effort to build on previous victories.

“In reality, we were mistaken for a very long period. Regarding the campaign for gun safety legislation, Murphy remarked, “We missed a chance for decades. He said that after Democratic electoral defeats that followed the adoption of a crime law in the 1990s, there was a perception that people had little interest in gun safety and that it was a losing political issue.

“That was just a lie,” Murphy said. But it was a fiction that the gun lobby, with some assistance from Democrats, did a terrific job of peddling.

In particular, Biden wants to outlaw “assault weapons,” which are firearms that can swiftly kill a large number of people and are often used in mass shootings. However, several Republicans who supported the 2022 gun legislation are worried about the prospect of more action, or unilateral action by the White House.

Sen. John Cornyn, a Republican from Texas, remarked, “I’m a little nervous.” “I don’t want them to write a rule that basically contradicts what we’ve agreed upon or voted on,” the speaker said.

Republicans in Connecticut were even more scathing of the administration, with state representative Craig Fishbein accusing the administration of “continued erosion of the rights of law-abiding Connecticut residents” via its stance on guns.

Millions of more money have been invested in mental health programmes for kids and schools thanks to the legislation. The ministries of Education and Health and Human Services issued governors a joint letter on Friday outlining the options at their disposal to assist mental health, particularly if a student has been affected by gun violence.

The paragraph was without a doubt a turning point, according to John Feinblatt, the executive director of Everytown for Gun Safety. Legal action “clearly broke a log jam.”

Yet the number of mass shootings in the US has increased since that measure was signed last summer. According to a database kept by The Associated Press and USA Today in collaboration with Northeastern University as of Friday, there had been at least 26 mass murders in the United States thus far in 2023 that had resulted in at least 131 fatalities, not including the shooters who perished.

The database defines a mass homicide as one in which four or more people are murdered, not including the offender, during a 24-hour period. This puts the nation on a quicker pace for mass murders than in any previous year since 2006, according to the database.

The leading cause of death for children in the United States is firearms, which have claimed the lives of 491 youngsters between the ages of 12 and 17 and 85 under the age of 11 so far this year. For individuals under the age of 19, the firearm fatality rate as of 2020 is 5.6 per 100,000. With 0.08 deaths per 100,000, Canada is the next equivalent country.

“Ending gun violence is a moral imperative and a winnable issue,” said Nelba Marquez-Greene, whose 6-year-old daughter, Ana Grace Marquez-Greene, was killed in the 2012 tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. “I also challenge us not to ignore survivor care because this grief does not go away.”

Following his address in West Hartford, Biden travelled to Greenwich for a charity event. He will speed up his campaign tour in the following days, stopping in New York, California, Illinois, and Maryland before the month is over.