President Joe Biden addressed the nation last night, following the Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde, Texas. Nineteen children and two teachers were killed.
Biden’s speech began so well. It felt like he was truly uniting the country. He began with:
I had hoped, when I became President, I would not have to do this again.
Another massacre. Uvalde, Texas. An elementary school. Beautiful, innocent second, third, fourth graders. And how many scores of little children who witnessed what happened see their friends die as if they’re on a battlefield, for God’s sake. They’ll live with it the rest of their lives.
There’s a lot we don’t know yet, but there’s a lot we do know.
There are parents who will never see their child again, never have them jump in bed and cuddle with them. Parents who will never be the same.
To lose a child is like having a piece of your soul ripped away. There’s a hollowness in your chest, and you feel like you’re being sucked into it and never going to be able to get out. It’s suffocating. And it’s never quite the same.
And it’s a feeling shared by the siblings, and the grandparents, and their family members, and the community that’s left behind.
Scripture says — Jill and I have talked about this in different contexts, in other contexts: “The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.” So many crushed spirits.
So, tonight, I ask the nation to pray for them. to give the parents and siblings the strength in the darkness they feel right now.
Biden’s speech could have ended there, but he continued on with this:
As a nation, we have to ask: When in God’s name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby? When in God’s name will we do what we all know in our guts needs to be done?
It’s been 340 – 3,448 days – 10 years since I stood up at a high school in Connecticut – a grade school in Connecticut, where another gunman massacred 26 people, including 20 first graders, at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
Since then, there have been over 900 incidents of gunfires reported on school grounds.
Marjorie Stonemason Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Santa Fe High School in Texas. Oxford High School in Michigan. The list goes on and on.
Many people spoke out on the extremely political nature of Biden’s speech.
Matt Walsh of The Daily Wire said, “Biden had a chance to unite the country in our mourning of the lost innocent children but instead he rambled about the gun lobby, attacked Republicans, and wandered off the stage. We are being led by an incompetent, incoherent fool who also happens to be a very bad man.”
Tucker Carlson was live during the president’s address and said, “The President of the United States, frail, confused, bitterly partisan, desecrating the memory of recently murdered children with tired talking points of the Democratic Party, dividing the country in a moment of deep pain rarer than uniting. His voice raising and amplified only as he repeats the talking points he repeated for over 35 years in the United States Senate, partisan politics being the only thing that ever animates him. Unfit for leadership of this country.”
