President Joe Biden called on Congress to pass an assault weapons ban and underscored the importance of mental health in his first response to three children and three adults dying in a school shooting in Nashville, Tennessee.
“It’s sick,” Biden said Monday before a White House small-business event. “We’re still gathering the facts and why. We do know, as of now, there’s a number of people who are not going to make it, including children. It’s heartbreaking — a family’s worst nightmare.”
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“We have to do more to stop gun violence. It’s ripping communities apart, ripping at the very soul of the nation,” he added. “I call on Congress again to pass my assault weapons ban.”
Biden opened his address to the Small Business Administration Women’s Business Summit with a quip about his love of ice cream.
“I came down because I heard there was chocolate chip ice cream,” he said. “By the way, I have a whole refrigerator full of it upstairs. You think I’m kidding? I’m not.”
An hour earlier, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre previewed Biden’s efforts to put pressure on congressional Republicans to pass an assault weapons ban in response to the Nashville shooting. When Biden is on the campaign trail, promises to reintroduce an assault weapons ban routinely earn the president the most applause.
“He wants Congress to act because enough is enough,” Jean-Pierre told reporters Monday afternoon. “How many more children have to be murdered before Republicans in Congress will step up and act to pass the assault weapons ban?”
First lady Jill Biden also addressed the shooting on Monday. The first lady, a community college professor, told the National League of Cities Congressional Cities Conference in Washington, D.C., that “our children deserve better.”
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“I am truly without words,” she said. “We stand, all of us, we stand with Nashville in prayer.”
Six people are dead, as well as the shooter, after a 28-year-old biological woman who identified as a man opened fire with two assault-style rifles and a handgun Monday morning at the Covenant School, a private Christian school in Nashville.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story reported Hale was a biological man who identified as a woman. Hale was a biological woman who identified as a man. The Washington Examiner regrets the error.
