By Le Figaro with AFP
Published on 02/14/2023 at 10:38 p.m
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US President Joe Biden. ALMOND NGAN / AFP
“Enough!”: Joe Biden on Tuesday urged Congress to “act” on the “epidemic” of gun violence in the United States on the day after three new killings were caused by a gunman on a Michigan university campus. In a country plagued by daily shootings and where firearms are proliferating, the US President announced that he had promised North Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer “additional federal law enforcement personnel” after a shooter killed three students and injured five others Monday night before committing suicide on the Michigan State University (MSU) campus.
At an emotional news conference in Lansing, the capital of this Great Lakes state bordering Canada, authorities confirmed the deaths of three people and serious injuries to five others from bullets in one evening. All of these victims are “MSU students,” said Chris Rozman, one of the police chiefs at the university, which is one of the most respected in the country with about 50,000 students. The agent clarified that the “43-year-old suspect,” named Anthony McRae, was found shot dead at the scene around midnight Monday, saying he was “not a university affiliate, student or faculty member, now or in the past.”
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“American Problem”
During that press conference, which left officials in tears, Governor Whitmer, with great emotion, denounced a “new place of coexistence destroyed by bullets and bloodshed.” “We know it’s just an American problem (…) We can’t go on living like this,” grumbled the Michigan leader. President Biden has made the point in two consecutive White House statements. “Too many American communities have been wiped out by gun violence,” he thundered again. “I have taken action to combat this epidemic in America, including through a historic number of executive orders and the first gun safety law in 30 years … But we have to do more,” he said, who was honored with honors from 17 young educators who were killed by gunfire at a high school in Parkland, Florida on February 14, 2018.
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“All Americans should cry ‘enough’ and demand action from Congress,” urged the 80-year-old Democratic leader. Despite tentative progress, Joe Biden unsuccessfully urges Congress to restore the national ban on assault rifles as it existed in 1994 and 2004, but he does run up against Republicans posing as gun rights defenders, who have had a slim majority since January in the House of Representatives. The MSU gunman opened fire on a college building around 8:30 p.m. Monday before moving to another building where gunfire was also heard, according to campus police. “I will never forget my classmates’ cries, the cries of pain, to call for help,” said student Claire Papoulias in the local press, who threw herself on the floor to avoid the killer’s bullets that appeared in a classroom.
Mobile still unknown
Arriving quickly, hundreds of police officers had launched a manhunt, immediately circulating photos of the suspect: a short black man wearing a denim jacket, red shoes, a baseball cap and a half-covered face. Officer Rozman praised the responsiveness of campus residents. “Thanks to the quick release of the photo from the surveillance cameras and (…) a tip from a caller, (the caller) led the police to the suspect,” he said. He thanked them and said he had “no idea of the motive” for his crimes.
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The United States pays a very high price for the proliferation of firearms on its territory and easy access by Americans to them. The country has more individual weapons than inhabitants, around 400 million: every third adult owns at least one gun and almost every second adult lives in a household in which there is a gun. The consequence of this proliferation is the very high death rate from guns in the United States, nearly 50,000, about half of which are suicides.