‘Enough’: Biden tells lawmakers to pass gun control laws

In emotional speech, US president says it’s time for lawmakers to enact tough laws – including a ban on assault weapons – to curb gun violence.

In an emotional speech broadcast live on national television, United States President Joe Biden has called on lawmakers to pass legislation to curb gun violence in the country, a week after 19 children were shot dead by a gunman in their school.

Biden proposed several laws, including a ban on assault weapons, which was allowed to lapse under a Republican administration in 2004. Other proposals included a limit on high capacity magazines, secure storage laws, “red flag” laws, universal background checks, and the removal of protection laws for gun manufacturers.

“It’s time to act,” Biden said from the White House. “For the children, we have lost. For the children, we can save. For the nation we love. Let’s meet at the moment. It’s time to act.”

The impassioned speech, broadcast during primetime in the US, followed a series of mass shootings across the country in the past three weeks, in which men with guns have killed Black people in Buffalo, schoolchildren in Uvalde and doctors in Tulsa.

Peppering his speech with declarations of “enough”, Biden said too many places in the US had become “killing fields”, and urged Republicans in the Senate to back changes to legislation that would make the country safer for everyone.

Alluding to the mid-term elections later this year, he said gun control was a matter of “common sense” and stressed that the Second Amendment, which gun proponents use to curb regulation, was not absolute.

SOURCE: NEWS AGENCIES