President Joe Biden renewed calls for additional gun control measures in the wake of a mass shooting in Georgia.
“There are too many people who are able to access guns that shouldn’t be able to,” Biden said during a speech in Westby, Wisconsin, on Thursday. “Let’s require safe storage of firearms. I know I have mine locked up.”
Biden has called for stricter gun control laws for the duration of his time in office, often mentioning his desire to restore an “assault weapons” ban that was in place between 1994 and 2004. This time he mentioned safe storage laws and said parents should be held responsible when their children commit crimes using guns.
“How could you not have an assault rifle, a weapon in a house, not locked up and knowing your kid knows where it is?” he said. “You gotta hold parents accountable if they let their child have access to these guns.”
Four people were killed after a gunman opened fire at a high school 50 miles northeast of Atlanta on Wednesday in an incident being investigated by multiple law enforcement agencies.
Police announced the shooter was Colt Gray, 14, a student at the high school. He is in police custody and has been charged with murder. Law enforcement also said Gray will be tried as an adult.
Gray was known to law enforcement, as the FBI’s Atlanta division said Wednesday it had received several anonymous tips about online threats he had made. Gray and his father were subsequently questioned by local law enforcement.
“The Jackson County Sheriff’s Office located a possible subject, a 13-year-old male, and interviewed him and his father. The father stated he had hunting guns in the house, but the subject did not have unsupervised access to them. The subject denied making the threats online. Jackson County alerted local schools for continued monitoring of the subject,” the statement from FBI Atlanta said.
Officials said Gray has been charged with four counts of felony murder, with additional charges expected to be levied against him. He will make his first court appearance at 8:30 a.m. on Friday.
Vice President Kamala Harris offered condolences and vowed that “we must end the epidemic of gun violence in our country once and for all” in a statement on Wednesday.
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“This is a senseless tragedy — and it does not have to be this way,” Harris said.
Biden was in Wisconsin to talk about the economy, part of a larger effort by Democrats to win the battleground state in November.
