LAST UPDATE | 7 May 2023
US PRESIDENT JOE Biden has renewed his call for Congress to ban semi-automatic rifles like the one used in a weekend shooting that left eight victims including children dead in Texas.
The president ordered US flags lowered to half staff one day after a heavily-armed gunman opened fire without warning at an outlet mall north of Dallas, in the latest spasm of gun violence to shake the nation.
“Once again I ask Congress to send me a bill banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. Enacting universal background checks. Requiring safe storage. Ending immunity for gun manufacturers,” Biden, for years a proponent of tougher gun laws, said in a statement.
“I will sign it immediately. We need nothing less to keep our streets safe.”
Witnesses and police described scenes of panic and horror at the Allen Premium Outlets, located in a suburb north of Dallas, where video footage circulating online showed the shooter getting out of a sedan and opening fire on people walking nearby.
The president said he and First Lady Jill Biden were praying for the victims and their families and were “grateful to the first responders who acted quickly and courageously to save lives.”
But an exasperated Biden also pointed to the staggering number of mass shootings this year, already nearly 200, and the more than 14,000 firearm deaths, noting that the leading cause of death for American children is gun violence.
“Too many families have empty chairs at their dinner tables,” he went on.
Republican members of Congress cannot continue to meet this epidemic with a shrug. Tweeted thoughts and prayers are not enough.
The stinging rebuke refers to the typical responses from lawmakers in the aftermath of such violence.
Republicans in particular have been accused of offering “thoughts and prayers,” but little concrete action to reduce gun deaths.
Biden, after several recent mass shootings, has called for reinstating the assault weapons ban that he helped pass through Congress in 1994 when he was a senator, but which lapsed in 2004.
Getting such a bill through today’s divided Congress appears all but impossible, with the vast majority of Republicans opposed to such restrictions.
Some of the victims were as young as five years old, a hospital official told NBC News.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott called the mass shooting an “unspeakable tragedy.”
The police chief later said authorities believe the unidentified shooter “acted alone.” CNN showed a cropped photograph of the apparent shooter dead on the ground, wearing tactical gear with extra magazines, and with an AR-15-style rifle at his side.
Janet St. James, a spokesperson for Medical City Healthcare, which operates multiple trauma facilities in North Texas, said it received eight patients from the shooting, ranging in age from five to 61, NBC News reported.
“Allen is a proud and safe city which makes today’s senseless act of violence even more shocking,” mayor Ken Fulk said in a statement.
“I want to commend our police and fire departments for their quick response. Their thorough training not to hesitate to move toward the threat likely saved more lives today.”
Jaynal Pervez, who arrived at the mall while his daughter was inside, told CNN: “There’s no more safe places. I don’t know what to do.”
Pervez later told broadcaster CBS that the scenes in the mall parking lot had been chaotic.
“I saw the shoes around there, people’s cell phones on the street,” he said.
With more firearms than inhabitants, the United States has the highest rate of gun deaths of any developed country – 49,000 in 2021, up from 45,000 the year before.
Maxwell Gum, a 16-year-old shift leader at Wetzel’s Pretzels, was on his lunch break when a family with limited English ran into the back of his store, urgently telling him “Gun! Shoot!” as the sound of gunfire could be heard in the background.
He took the family into the long delivery corridor that runs behind the shops, hoping it would be a safe place to hide. They found chaos.
“There were probably like 300 people pouring in from all the different doors,” the teenager said. “People are freaking out, we’re hearing screaming.”
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