Biden outlines plans to reduce US gun violence

“Gun violence in this country is an epidemic, and it’s an international embarrassment,” President Joe Biden said at a White House meeting on 8 April at which he described how he plans to tackle the problem. Reducing gun violence is not a partisan matter, he said, but one that most people and most gun owners support.1

“Every day in this country 316 people are shot,” Biden said. He recalled the killing of five people the day before in South Carolina; of 10 people in Boulder, Colorado, on 22 March; and of eight mostly Asian Americans shot at spas in Atlanta, Georgia, on 18 March. He introduced people who had lost family or friends in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Connecticut in 2012, the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Florida in 2018, and the Pulse nightclub shooting in Florida in 2016. Also present was former congresswoman Gabby Giffords, who was shot in the head in …