As mass shootings in the United States since the start of 2022 exceed 200, the United States President and the country’s Catholic Bishops call for better gun-safety measures as a gun bill is being considered in Congress. Pope Francis has condemned the mass shootings and the indiscriminate trafficking of arms.
By Deborah Castellano Lubov
As the number of shootings in the United States is becoming an ever-more-frequent and deadly phenomenon, State and Church leaders are pushing for better gun-control laws in the United States.
In the wake of the country’s more than 200 mass shootings since the start of 2022, President Joe Biden called on Congress on Tuesday to find a way to limit sales of assault rifles.
Appealing to Congress to act, he asked: ‘How much more carnage are we willing to accept?’ and called for the passing of “commonsense laws to combat the epidemic of gun violence that is taking lives every day.”
Following recent mass shootings in Texas and New York, where 18-year-old assailants used semi-automatic rifles to kill 31 people, the House is working on passing gun legislation.
This week, on Wednesday in Tulsa, Oklahoma, another gunman shot and killed four people and himself at a hospital.
The Texas tragedy took place last week at an elementary school in Uvalde, where 19 fourth-grade students and two teachers were killed.
Last month, in New York, ten people were killed and three others wounded in a mass shooting at a Buffalo grocery store.
President Biden is encouraging House representatives to vote for restrictions that could limit high-powered weapons like the ones used in Uvalde.
Gun-control Bill at stake
As the House is working on a gun bill, partisan positions emerged during a Judiciary Committee hearing Thursday on legislation that would raise the age limit for purchasing semi-automatic rifles from 18 to 21.
The bill also would make it a federal offense to import, manufacture or possess large-capacity magazines and would create a grant program to buy back such magazines.
Pope Francis: Enough!
Pope Francis called for an end to the indiscriminate trafficking of arms the day after the Texas elementary school shooting, saying he was praying for the children and adults who were killed, and for their families.
