New York/Washington – After a spite of gun-violence related incidents, New York’s legislature voted Thursday to ban anyone under age 21 from buying or possessing a semi-automatic rifle. U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday also called on Congress to ban assault weapons, expand background checks and implement other gun control measures to address a string of mass shootings in the United States.

Before a man killed at least four people Wednesday at a hospital in Tulsa, there had already been 231 mass shootings this year in the United States, according to the Gun Violence Archive. It is the twentieth since last week’s shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Tex., left 19 children and two teachers dead.

Mass shootings, where four or more people — not including the shooter — are injured or killed, have averaged more than one per day so far this year. Not a single week in 2022 has passed without at least four mass shootings.

Speaking from the White House, in a speech broadcast live in primetime, Biden asked a country stunned by the recent shootings at a school in Texas, a grocery store in New York and a medical building in Oklahoma, how many more lives it would take to change gun laws in America.

"For God's sake, how much more carnage are we willing to accept?" Biden asked.

The bill passed by New York legislature yesterday is seen as a major change to state firearm laws pushed through less than three weeks after an 18-year-old used one of the guns to kill 10 people at a supermarket in Buffalo, NY.

The new legislation will restrict civilian purchases of bullet-resistant armor, which was worn by the killer in Buffalo. New guns are also required to be equipped with microstamping technology that can help law enforcement investigators trace bullets to specific firearms.

New York already requires people to be 21 to possess a handgun. Younger people would still be allowed to have other types of rifles and shotguns under the new law, but would be unable to buy the type of fast-firing rifles used by the 18-year-old gunmen in the mass shootings in Buffalo and at a Texas elementary school.

The avowed white supremacist accused of a racist attack that killed 10 people at the supermarket in a Black neighborhood in Buffalo, New York, pleaded not guilty on Thursday.

Besides raising the legal purchase age to 21, the bill would also require anyone buying a semi-automatic rifle to get a license — something now only required for handguns.

President Biden during his visit to Uvalde, Texas, where the school shooting took place, said "I couldn't help but think there are too many other schools, too many other everyday places that have become killing fields, battlefields, here in America."

The remarks come as law enforcement officers in Texas are being questioned on a possible delay of action from their side. A State senator revealed on Thursday that Emergency-911 calls from children hiding from the gunman who killed 21 people inside a Texas elementary school were not routed to the on-scene police commander who waited nearly an hour before officers moved in to end the siege.

The Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) disclosed last week that as many as 19 officers from various local law enforcement agencies stood outside the classroom occupied by the Uvalde gunman for more than 45 minutes before a U.S. Border Patrol-led tactical squad stormed in and killed the shooter.

The president, a Democrat, called for a number of measures opposed by Republicans in Congress, including banning the sale of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, or, if that were not possible, raising the minimum age to buy those weapons to 21 from 18. He also pressed for repealing the liability shield that protects gun manufacturers from being sued for violence perpetrated by people carrying their guns.

Latest gun-violence related incidents
In Iowa, a man shot and killed two women in the parking lot of a church on Thursday and then turned the gun on himself, police said, adding three more dead to the toll in a series of recent shootings that have rocked the United States.

The Iowa shooting took place shortly after President Joe Biden delivered a major address on gun violence in the wake of mass shootings in Buffalo, New York; Uvalde, Texas, and Tulsa, Oklahoma, in recent weeks.

In Wisconsin, at least two people were wounded when multiple gunshots were fired at people attending a funeral in the state of on Thursday, police said.

In Oklahoma, a man who fatally shot five people including himself at an medical building, after buying an assault-style rifle on the same day, had gone there to kill a doctor who he blamed for back pain he felt after surgery, on Wednesday. It appears from preliminary reports according to the police, the gunman blamed the doctor for his continuing pain after a recent back operation and bought an AR-style rifle just hours before the rampage.

Hospitals, like schools, are not typically designed to guard against the threat of a determined gunman entering the building to take lives.

While Biden and Congress explore compromises, the Supreme Court is due to decide a major case that could undermine new efforts to enact gun control measures while making existing ones vulnerable to legal attack. read more

Biden said he received a handwritten note from a grandmother who had lost her granddaughter in Uvalde that read: “Erase the invisible line that is dividing our nation. Come up with a solution and fix what's broken and make the changes that are necessary to prevent this from happening again.”
-Ap/Reuters/WP