WASHINGTON/NEWTOWN, Conn. (Reuters) – Joe Biden on Thursday commemorated the tenth anniversary of the Sandy Hook massacre, one of the worst school shootings in U.S. history, by saying Americans bear “guilt community” for failing to adequately address gun violence since then.
On December 14, 2012, a heavily armed man shot and killed 20 young children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, where families gathered on Wednesday in front of a memorial opened last month on the edge of the school grounds. ‘establishment.
“It’s notoriety that nobody wants,” said Skeff Bisset, whose two children who were in the school in 2012 survived.
The tenth anniversary of the massacre comes shortly after far-right polemicist Alex Jones was convicted of spreading conspiracy theories about Sandy Hook denying the very existence of the massacre.
It also comes six months after Congress passed the first major federal gun reform in 30 years, following the recent shootings at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, and a supermarket in Buffalo, Texas. New York State.
“We have a moral obligation to pass and enforce laws that can prevent these kinds of things from happening again,” Joe Biden said in a statement.
“We owe it to the brave young survivors and the families who lost a part of their soul ten years ago.”
The American president notably advocates the banning of assault rifles and large-capacity ammunition magazines, of the type used by the 20-year-old Sandy Hook killer who killed himself.
“It is too much. We must eliminate these weapons which have no other purpose than to kill people in large numbers”, he underlined.
Former President Barack Obama also released a statement commemorating “the saddest day of (his) presidency” while saying that “slowly, gradually, the tide is turning” and that “real change is possible”.
(Report by Steve Holland and Nathan Layne in Newtown; French version Diana Mandiá and Jean-Stéphane Brosse)