U.S. presidents' words echo across decades of school shootings

Record ID: 1674385

  • Title: U.S. presidents' words echo across decades of school shootings
  • Date: 26th May 2022
  • Summary: NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES (FILE - NOVEMBER 13, 2012) (REUTERS) ***WARNING: CONTAINS FLASH PHOTOGRAPHY*** ROLLING STONES BAND MEMBERS POSING FOR PHOTOS ON THE RED CARPET FOR NEW DOCUMENTARY FILM, "CROSSFIRE HURRICANE", WITH LATE DRUMMER, CHARLIE WATTS FAR LEFT WATTS SPEAKING TO REPORTER/ RICHARDS AND WOOD BEING INTERVIEWED WATTS SPEAKING TO REPORTER ABOUT WATCH
  • Embargoed: 10th June 2022 00:06
  • Keywords: Biden Bush Clinton Columbine Obama Parkland Sandy Hook Trump Uvalde school shootings shootings'
  • Location: VARIOUS
  • City: VARIOUS
  • Country: USA
  • Topics: Crime/Law/Justice,Crime,United States
  • Reuters ID: LVA00C090526052022RP1
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: U.S. Presidents have wrestled for decades with the increasingly deadly phenomenon of school shootings, and their frequent addresses on the subject have been strikingly repetitive over the years.
    After an 18-year-old gunman killed 19 children and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, on Tuesday (May 24), President Joe Biden spoke with a combination of solemnity and outrage familiar to Democratic Presidents.
    “So, tonight I ask the nation to pray for them,” Biden said, before calling for tighter gun laws.
    “As a nation we have to ask – ‘when in God’s name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby,” he said.
    Such addresses have become commonplace since President Bill Clinton spoke to shocked Americans on April 20, 1999, when two students shot and killed 12 fellow students and one teacher at Columbine High School in Colorado before taking their own lives.
    “I can only say tonight that the prayers of the American people are with you,” Clinton said to the families.
    As of Tuesday, there had been 1,369 shooting incidents at schools in United States since 1970, according to the K-12 School Shooting Database maintained by the Naval Postgraduate School’s Center for Homeland Defense and Security, and 137 this year alone - almost one a day
    The three deadliest school shootings have all taken place in the last decade, according to James Densley, co-founder of The Violence Project, which tracks mass shooting events in which four or more people are killed.
    Those shootings were the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary attack, in which a gunman killed 26 children and school staff; the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, which claimed the lives of 17 people; and Tuesday's massacre in Texas.
    “Somehow, this has become routine,” former President Barack Obama said after a shooter killed 10 people at Umpqua Community College on October 01, 2015.
    Both Republican and Democratic presidents respond to shootings with references to scripture, calls for national unity and support for the grieving.
    But they offer differing assessments of the solution to the endemic problem.
    While Democrats urge the public to elect leaders who will take on the National Rifle Association (NRA) and gun lobby, Republicans like former President Donald Trump, emphasize mental health, not the proliferation of guns, as the primary cause.
    “And the gun doesn’t pull the trigger, a mind, a sick mind pulls the trigger,” Trump said in 2019.
    In a country where gun rights are enshrined in the Constitution and gun sales in the millions are surging, the NRA is likely to shrug off new calls for more gun control measures despite the latest shootings. The Republican Party, which has thwarted Democratic Party efforts in Congress to legislate stricter gun measures, is closely aligned with the NRA.
    The NRA pressed ahead with preparations for its annual gathering starting on Friday (May 27) in Houston, just 280 miles (450 km) from the Uvalde massacre.
    Americans are broadly supportive of both the right to own firearms and the idea of regulating gun ownership. A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted on Wednesday (May 25) found that 66% of Americans, including 53% of Republicans, supported moderate or strong regulations on gun ownership.
    After the Uvalde shooting, Gun Owners of America, which bills itself as tougher than the NRA, said policymakers should discuss "real solutions" like arming teachers.
    (Production: Ashraf Fahim)
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