President Joe Biden has had a long career in politics — ask people on both sides of the aisle who rail or worry it’s been too long. But never in his long career did he think he’d have to confront the tragic fact he’s confronting today.
“I never thought I’d even remotely say this in my whole career — guns are the number one killer of children in America, guns,” the President said today, flummoxed by the opposition to gun control measures meant to limit access to predators, “More than car accidents, more than cancer, more than other diseases.”
The comment is particularly poignant for Biden, who lost his first wife and an infant daughter in a car accident in 1972. Cars have become much safer and traffic fatalities since then have dropped from more than four people per million miles traveled to just over one person per million miles. Gun deaths among young Americans are going the opposite direction, with “the child firearm mortality rate moving from a recent low of 1.8 deaths per 100,000 in 2013 to 3.7 in 2021.”
Biden: And let me be very clear, if members of the congress refuse to act, we will need to elect new members of congress that will act. Democrat or Republican. pic.twitter.com/8yQtFAfE47
— Acyn (@Acyn) September 22, 2023
Biden notes that in 2023 the U.S. has already experienced more than 500 mass shootings, a trend that makes unremarkable that it has become big business to turn classrooms into fortresses with new technology, a front page story this week at CNN. Biden said in his speech that this is “not who we are,” however much evidence there seems to be to the contrary.
Biden also struck a bipartisan note — not just going after GOP lawmakers like Sen. Roger Marshall who consider any change to gun restrictions an affront to liberty, but also inviting uncooperative Democrats to get new jobs.
“It’s totally unacceptable,” Biden said, “and we have to act and we have to act now. And let me be very clear, if members of Congress refuse to act, then we’ll need to elect new members of Congress that will act, Democrat or Republican.”
