Tuesday, one day after a deadly shooting rampage on the campus of a Michigan university left three people dead and five more injured, US President Joe Biden urged Congress to take action against America’s scourge of gun violence.
As the president of a country where shootings occur frequently, Biden claimed to have promised the Democratic governor of the state the “deployment of all necessary federal law enforcement.”
All of the casualties were students who were shot during the shooter’s rampage on the Michigan State University (MSU) campus. The shooter ultimately died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Police revealed at a tearful press conference in Lansing, the state’s capital, that the 43-year-old suspect, Anthony McRay, had no connection to the institution and had been discovered dead on Monday night at midnight.
At the briefing, a visibly shaken Governor Gretchen Whitmer called the issue of gun violence a “uniquely American problem.”
Speaking to reporters, she said the university had become “another place that is supposed to be about community and togetherness shattered by bullets and bloodshed.”
Biden drove the point home in two successive White House statements.
“Too many American communities have been devastated by gun violence,” he said.
“I have taken action to combat this epidemic in America, including a historic number of executive actions and the first significant gun safety law in nearly 30 years, but we must do more,” he said.
