Biden says 'we have to act' after Texas school shooting

WASHINGTON (AP) — Lamenting a uniquely American tragedy, an anguished and angry President Joe Biden delivered an urgent call for new restrictions on firearms Tuesday night after a gunman shot and killed 19 children and two adults at a Texas elementary school.Biden spoke from the White House barely an hour after returning from a five-day trip to Asia that was bracketed by mass shootings in the U.S. He pleaded for action to address gun violence after years of failure — and bitterly blamed firearm manufacturers and their supporters for blocking legislation in Washington.’“When in God’s name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby?” Biden said with emotion. The back-to-back tragedies served as sobering reminders of the frequency and brutality of an American epidemic of mass gun violence.“These kinds of mass shootings rarely happen anywhere else in the world,” Biden said, reflecting that other nations have people filled with hate or with mental health issues but no other industrialized nation experiences gun violence at the level of the U.S.“Why?” he asked.It was much too early to tell if the latest violent outbreak could break the political logjam around tightening the nation’s gun laws, after so many others — including the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut that killed 26, including 20 children — have failed.“The idea that an 18 year old kid can walk into a gun store and buy two assault weapons is just wrong,” Biden said.