“Enough”: Joe Biden demanded yesterday, for the umpteenth time, that Congress “take action” to address the “epidemic” of gun violence in the US, following the triple killings by a gunman on a college campus in Michigan.

In the only economically developed country that is bleeding daily from attacks using weapons, which do not stop spreading, the US president assured that he promised the Democratic governor of the state of Michigan (northern), Gretchen Whitmer, that he would deploy “additional members of the federal law enforcement officers’ after a gunman killed three students and wounded five others before killing himself at Michigan State University (MSU) on Monday night.

During an emotionally charged news conference in Lansing, the capital of this Great Lakes state, which borders Canada, authorities confirmed the three deaths and said five other students were seriously injured in Monday’s nightmarish attack.

All the victims without exception were “MSU students,” said Chris Roseman, a university police officer at the institution, one of the most watched in the US, home to some 50,000 young people.

He added that the “43-year-old suspect”, identified as Anthony McRae, who was found dead at the scene on Monday at around midnight, had “no connection to the university, nor to any student, nor to any employee of the institution, nor currently, nor in the past ».

“American Problem”

During the press conference, with officials unable to hold back tears, a visibly upset Governor Whitmer condemned the “bloodshed” in yet another area of ​​”common life.”

“We know that this is an exclusively American problem (…). We can’t continue to live like this,” said the democratic politician.

President Biden released two announcements back-to-back. “Too many American communities have been hit hard by gun violence,” he recalled once again. “I have taken action to fight this epidemic in America, with a record number of executive orders and the first gun safety law in 30 years (…). But we need to do more,” he admitted, while paying tribute to the victims of the massacre at a high school in Parkland (Florida) on February 14, 2018.

“All Americans must shout ‘enough’ and demand that Congress take action,” the 80-year-old Democratic president added.

ban (?)

With the progress made being marginal and tentative, Biden is asking Congress – in vain – for a nationwide ban on the sale of assault rifles, as in the period from 1994 to 2004, but he is running afoul of Republicans, whose ranks include staunch defenders of the constitutional right to bear arms. The opposition now has, since January, a slim majority in the House of Representatives.

The perpetrator of the attack at MSU opened fire yesterday at around 20:30 (local time; around 04:30 Tuesday Greek time) in one of the higher education institution’s buildings, then in a second one, according to university police.

“I will never forget the screams of my fellow students, the screams of pain, the screams for help,” Claire Papoulia, who ducked down to escape the bullets inside a classroom where she was taking a class, told local press.

Hundreds of police who arrived quickly on the scene dressed up as a manhunt and distributed a photo of the suspect: a short black man in a denim jacket, baseball cap, red shoes and a partially covered face.

Police Officer Roseman praised the reflexes of those on campus. “Thanks to the quick release of the photo taken by the CCTV cameras and (…) a tip from a caller” law enforcement was “led” to the suspect, he said, adding that he had “no idea” who the motive for the murders.

The US is paying a heavy price for the widespread proliferation of weapons on its soil and the ease with which Americans can gain access to them.

The country has more guns than people, or in other words 400 million; one in three adults owns at least one gun, one in two lives in a household with at least one gun.

The consequence of this spread is the extremely high number of deaths in the USA due to the use of weapons, which cannot be compared with the indicators in other developed countries: it is close to 50,000 annually, half of which are suicides.

One of the most tragic components of this situation is the scourge of gun attacks inside American educational institutions.