Month: June 2022

President Joe Biden delivered a prime-time nationwide address from the White House on Thursday evening, calling for Congress to ban assault weapons and implement stricter gun laws in the wake of several mass shootings in the United States.  Biden said in part: “We need to ban assault weapons and high capacity magazines. And if we can’t ban assault weapons, then we should raise the age to purchase them from 18 to 21, strengthen background checks, enact safe storage laws and red flag laws. Repeal the immunity that protects gun manufacturers from liability, address the mental health crisis.”

Biden added: “This is not about taking away anyone’s guns. It’s not about vilifying gun owners. The Second Amendment, like all other rights, is not absolute. There have always been limitations on the type of weapons you can own in America. Machine guns have been federally regulated for nearly 90 years and this is still a free country. This isn’t about taking away anyone’s rights, it’s about protecting children, it’s about protecting families.”

Referencing his trip to Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, after the shooting at that killed 19 students and two teachers May 24, Biden said: “Standing there, in that small town, like so many communities across America, I couldn’t help but think, there are too many other schools, too many other everyday places that have become killing fields.” The latest mass shooting occurred on Wednesday in Tulsa, Oklahoma, leaving four dead, following the massacre in Uvalde, Texas, as well as an apparently racially-motivated attack at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, leaving 10 Black people dead.

Biden called for Republican support for legislation that would ban high-capacity magazines for assault rifles. He also called for an outright ban on the weapons themselves, but added, “If we can’t ban assault weapons like we should, then we should at least raise the age to 21.”  Biden also called on lawmakers to take a stand against the gun lobby and gun manufacturers, whom he blamed for marketing assault weapons. The President said: “Guns are the number one killer of children in the United States of America. The number one killer. More than car accidents, more than cancer. Over the last two decades, more school-aged children have died from guns than on-duty police officers and active duty military combined.”

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Tulsa, Oklahoma police say that the motive of the alleged hospital shooter was to kill the doctor who performed back surgery on him “and anyone else who got in his way.”  Tulsa police Chief Wendell Franklin said during a live-streamed press conference Thursday that the gunman, Michael Lewis, blamed Dr. Preston Phillips for continuing pain after back surgery May 19.

Tulsa police said the first 911 call came at 4:52 p.m. Wednesday. Chief Franklin said Tulsa police first arrived at the scene at 4:56 p.m., and as police made their way to the second floor of the Natalie building on the campus of Saint Francis Hospital, they heard a final gunshot at 4:58 p.m.

Police said Lewis bought an AR-15 style semi-automatic rifle Wednesday, hours before the killings, from a local Tulsa gun store. He bought a .40 caliber semi-automatic handgun from a local pawn shop. Police said 30 .223-caliber bullet casings and seven .40-caliber casings were recovered at the scene. A letter that made it clear he came to kill Phillips was found on Lewis’ body told the story of what he planned to do, according to police.

The deceased shooting victims were Drs. Preston Phillips and Stephanie Housen, as well as Amanda Green and William Love. Green was a receptionist and Love was a patient. Phillips’ body was found in an exam room. Police believe that was the gunman taking his own life. A half-hour after the shootings, Lewis’ wife called law enforcement to say her husband had killed several people, and added that she did not know in advance that her husband planned to do the shootings.

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On Wednesday, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., ordered that John Hinckley Jr. — the attempted assassin of former President Ronald Reagan in 1981 — will be released from psychiatric supervision later this month. Hinckley completed a nine-month observation period ordered in September, and at that time U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman said the 67-year-old Hinckley would be free of all remaining restrictions if he maintains mental stability.

Hinckley spent more than three decades in a mental hospital as part of his insanity defense for shooting Reagan and three others outside the Washington, D.C., Hilton Hotel on March 30, 1981. Hinckley had acute psychosis at the time of the shooting and said he carried out the attack to impress actor Jodie Foster.

A judge granted his release in 2016 with a number of restrictions, including living with his mother in Virginia, to ensure Hinckley wouldn’t veer into violence again.  Hinckley’s defense team, prosecutors and mental health experts all agreed that they had no concerns about his mental state. Judge Friedman said:  “John Hinckley tried to kill the president of the United States. He came very close to doing so. Without losing sight of what he did 40 years ago, he has been the most scrutinized person … living under a microscope as none of us have. I am confident Mr. Hinckley will do well in the years remaining to him.”

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