US President Joe Biden on Wednesday led a moment of silence at a vigil for victims of gun violence and urged a ban on military style weapons commonly used in mass shootings, IgbereTV reports
Biden addressed the Annual National Vigil for All Victims of Gun Violence at a Washington, DC, church, saying that the increasingly frequent mass shootings are tearing the country apart.
It’s “violence that rips at the very soul, at the very soul of this nation,” a somber Biden said.
Reflecting on his own family tragedy, including losing his first wife and infant daughter in a car accident, then one of his sons to cancer, Biden said he could empathize with survivors of mass murders, like the 2012 massacre in a Newtown, Connecticut, elementary school that left 26 people dead. Twenty of them were children aged six or seven.
“Everyone’s different but I know that feeling. You know, it’s like a black hole in the middle of your chest. You’re being dragged into it. You never know where there’s a way out,” the visibly moved president said
