Questions of gun control and other efforts to stop schoolhouse and other mass shootings are dominating conversations in Washington, D.C., and around the nation, after Monday’s deadly shooting at The Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee.
“Blood doesn’t know a political party,” said former Obama administration education secretary Arne Duncan, who remembered viewing the aftermath of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Connecticut during his time in office.
“At some point,” the educator said, “we have to say this is too much. It’s been too much.”
At the White House, President Joe Biden called on Congress to act on gun control legislation – as he’s done repeatedly one mass shooting after another – “before another child is senselessly killed in a preventable act of gun violence.”
The president, who signed an executive order on gun control two weeks ago, told reporters on Tuesday morning before boarding Marine One, “I have gone the full extent of my executive authority to do, on my own, anything about guns.”
The demand for congressional action comes as White House officials are sending “prayers” for the families impacted by the Covenant School shooting, where six people were killed; three children and three adults. The suspect, a former student of the school, was fatally shot by police responding to the scene of the crime.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre posed a question to reporters attending the daily briefing Monday.
“How many more children have to be murdered before Republicans in Congress will step up and act to pass the assault weapons ban, to close loopholes in our background check system, or to require the safe storage of guns?” said Jean-Pierre.
This latest shooting takes place in Tennessee, known to have some of the weakest gun laws in the nation. One of those laws allows an adult 21 years or older…
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