The Uvalde school shooting took place on the 144th day of 2022, and became the 212th mass shooting of just this year. 

As this tragedy took the lives of 19 children and 2 adults, the nation turned to the President for a call to action. 

“To lose a child is like having a piece of your soul ripped away,” Biden said. “There’s a hollowness in your chest. You feel like you’re being sucked into it and never going to be able to get out.”

19 families went home without their children that day due to a lack of gun control.

’“When in God’s name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby?” Biden said with emotion. “Why are we willing to live with this carnage? Why do we keep letting this happen?”

As our nation is struck with tragedy after tragedy, gun control appears as an issue that remains unspoken. 

“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.

The American gun epidemic continues to rise and has become a great area of concern not only to our current president, but our most former, Obama. 

“Michelle and I grieve with the families in Uvalde, who are experiencing pain no one should have to bear,” Obama said in a statement. 

“We’re also angry for them. Nearly ten years after Sandy Hook—and ten days after Buffalo—our country is paralyzed, not by fear, but by a gun lobby and a political party that have shown no willingness to act in any way that might help prevent these tragedies,” Obama said.

As our country heals from yet another tragedy, it’s imperative that gun control be rethought before history can continue to repeat itself.