The nation came to a collective halt when a man wielding a “weapon of war” fatally shot 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School within a matter of minutes, yet 11 years later, the problem of gun violence “is still not solved,” President Joe Biden said Thursday on the anniversary of the tragedy.
“Today, those first grade students should be seniors in high school, dreaming big and about to embark on their adult lives,” Biden said in a statement reflecting on the 2012 attack in Newtown, Connecticut, which killed 20 children and six adult educators.
“We should not have to live like this,“ he continued. “It is a national tragedy that over a decade later our nation’s gun violence epidemic is still not solved.”
Biden, who has continually pressed Congress to take meaningful action to curb gun violence, once again on Thursday urged lawmakers to pass universal background checks and ban assault-style weapons and high-capacity magazines.
Last year — following a mass shooting at a Texas elementary school that killed 19 children and two adults, and a shooting at a New York supermarket that killed 10 people — he signed what was then the first major gun safety legislation that had been passed by Congress in nearly 30 years.
The bill, which Biden and his allies said didn’t go far enough, included incentives for states to pass “red flag” laws and expanded an existing law preventing people convicted of domestic abuse from owning a gun.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who had advocated for the legislation, shared photos of the Sandy Hook victims in a social media post Thursday, pleading for help in “creating a nation where this never ever happens again.”
So far this year, there have been 37 school shootings in the U.S. that resulted in injuries or deaths, according to an analysis by Education Week. The highest annual figure tallied by the news outlet, since its tracking began in 2018, was 51 last year.
“It doesn’t have to be this way,” Mark Barden, who co-founded the Sandy Hook Promise Action Fund after his son Daniel was killed in the 2012 attack, said in a statement on the 11th anniversary.
“Gun violence is preventable – which is why we continue to have tough, solution-oriented conversations with elected officials on both sides of the aisle. We must demand action so that we don’t pass this public health epidemic down to the next generation,” he said.
Sandy Hook Promise, a nonprofit established by victims’ families to fight gun violence, said that today it hopes to get people to speak up about any potential attack before it can come to fruition.
“In four out of five school shootings, at least one other person had knowledge of the attacker’s plan but failed to report it,” the organization said. “Sandy Hook Promise is shifting public awareness, emphasizing that ‘gun violence is preventable when you know the signs.’”
Need help? In the U.S., call 1-800-799-SAFE (7233) for the National Domestic Violence Hotline.