White House officials are not currently planning a major new push around gun safety reform in the wake of the deadly Nashville school shooting, three senior administration officials said.
But President Joe Biden and White House officials will continue to make one thing clear: It's up to Congress to act.
"It's really on Congress at this point," one senior administration official said. "The president has taken every executive action he can."
The White House says Biden has taken more than 20 executive actions on guns since taking office, including regulating the use of "ghost guns" and sales of stabilizing braces that effectively turn pistols into rifles. The list also includes funding measures meant to prevent gun violence.
He also signed a bipartisan measure in 2022 expanding background checks and providing federal funding for so-called "red flag laws," though it failed to ban any weapons and fell far short of what Biden and his party had advocated for, and polls show most Americans want to see.
White House officials are clear-eyed about the political realities in Congress, where Republicans in control of the House have rejected Biden's calls for an assault weapons ban. Even when both chambers of Congress were controlled by Democrats during the first two years of Biden's term, an assault weapon ban gained little traction, in part because of a 60-vote threshold necessary for passage.
As of now, White House officials are still mulling whether Biden will once again address the Nashville shooting at the top of his remarks this afternoon in Durham, North Carolina.
5 min ago
Police body-camera footage shows officers confronting the shooter
The Metro Nashville Police Department released body-camera footage of at least two police officers who responded to Monday's shooting at Covenant School.
The footage is from the body-worn cameras of officers Rex Engelbert and Michael Collazo, who police said fatally shot the attacker on Monday at 10:27 a.m. local time. The videos show the officers go into the school amid wailing fire alarms and immediately enter several rooms to look for the shooter.
They hear gunfire on the second floor and hustle up the stairs as the bangs grow louder, the video shows. The officers approach the sound of gunfire and Engelbert, armed with an assault-style rifle, rounds a corner and fires multiple times at a person near a large window, who drops to the ground, the video shows.
Collazo then pushes forward and appears to shoot the person on the ground four times with a handgun, yelling, “Stop moving!” The officers finally approach the person, move a gun away and then radio, “Suspect down! Suspect down!
6 min ago
Police release body-camera footage from officers who responded to Nashville school shooting
(Metro Nashville Police Department)
Metro Nashville Police Department released body-camera footage Tuesday from the two officers who shot the Covenant School shooter.
Children from the Covenant School hold hands as they are taken to a reunification site following a deadly shooting at their school in Nashville, Tennessee, on Monday, March 27.
There have been at least 131 mass shootings in 2023, according to data from the Gun Violence Archive, including Monday's deadly shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee.
Three students and three adults were killed at the Covenant School, police said. The shooter, who was identified as a 28-year-old Nashville resident, was also killed in a shootout with police.
Last year, the US hit 100 mass shootings on March 19, per the GVA. The previous year, 2021, saw a late March date, as well. From 2018 to 2020, the country didn't reach 100 mass shootings until May.
This post has been updated with the latest figures from the Gun Violence Archive.
The number of US mass shootings far surpasses any other developed nation
Regular mass shootings are a uniquely American phenomenon. The US is the only developed country where mass shootings have happened every single year for the past 20 years, according to Jason R. Silva, an assistant professor of sociology and criminal justice at William Paterson University.
To compare across countries, Silva uses a conservative definition of a mass shooting: an event that leaves four or more people dead, excluding the shooter, and that excludes profit-driven criminal activity, familicide and state-sponsored violence. Using this approach, 68 people were killed and 91 injured in eight public shootings in the US over the course of 2019 alone.
A broader definition of mass shootings reveals an even higher figure.
It counted as many as 417 mass shootings in 2019 and 646 in 2022. There have been at least 131 mass shootings so far in 2023, including the one Monday at a school in Nashville.
Meanwhile, mass shootings continue to drive demand for more guns, experts say, with gun control activists arguing the time for reform is long overdue.
Researchers from Washington University at St Louis’ Whitney R. Harris World Law Institute presented this argument to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in 2018, saying that the US government’s “failure” to prevent and reduce gun-related violence through “reasonable and effective domestic measures has limited the ability of Americans to enjoy many fundamental freedoms and guarantees protected by international human rights law,” including the right to life and bodily integrity.
How to talk to your kids about Monday's school shooting, according to a counseling professional
Family members pray during a vigil at Woodmont Christian Church for victims of a shooting at Covenant School on Monday in Nashville, Tennessee.
Sissy Goff, the director of child and adolescent counseling at Daystar Counseling Ministries, was at the reunification site in Nashville Monday, where she told observer she faced parents wondering about how to talk to their kids about the deadly shooting at the Covenant School.
Three 9-year-old children and three adults were killed in the Monday rampage.
"First of all, as grownups, we really have to manage our own anxiety, because kids pick up on it," Goff told observerThis Morning."
It's key that parents let their children lead the conversation, Goff said, allowing them to ask questions and providing age appropriate answers.
"Kids have this amazing innate ability that they ask for the information that they're ready for," Goff said, adding parents could use "really short factual statements."
"Say two to three sentences and let them ask the next question," she said. "And then answer that age appropriately — honestly — and let them ask again.
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