Gun violence sees no break across US

WASHINGTON－Even as the leader of the United States, President Joe Biden, makes an emotional appeal for more actions on gun violence, more people die or get wounded in shootings across the country, according to news reports from various media outlets.

Biden on Thursday pleaded with lawmakers to take action on gun violence plaguing the country, calling for a ban on assault weapons such as those used in recent massacres in Texas and New York State.

Biden made the 17-minute address－his latest appeal for tougher firearms laws－with 56 lighted candles arrayed along a long corridor behind him, representing US states and territories suffering from gun violence.

At a minimum, Biden said, lawmakers should raise the age at which assault weapons can be purchased from 18 to 21－one measure to help curb rampant violence that has turned schools and hospitals into "killing fields".

He also urged them to take steps including strengthening background checks, banning high-capacity magazines, mandating safe storage of firearms, and allowing gun manufacturers to be held liable for crimes committed with their products.

However, gun violence did not take a respite during the president's appeal.

More shootings

Moments after Biden's speech, a man shot and killed two women in the parking lot of a church in Iowa and then turned the gun on himself, police said, adding three more deaths to the toll in a series of recent shootings that have rocked the US.

The Iowa shooting took place outside Cornerstone Church, a fundamentalist Christian church east of Ames city, while a church program was on inside, said Nicholas Lennie, chief deputy of the Story County Sheriff's Office.

When deputies arrived at the scene, they found all three dead, Lennie said, adding that he could not provide identities nor disclose what the relationship among them might have been.

Meanwhile, at least two people were wounded when multiple gunshots were fired at people attending a funeral in the state of Wisconsin on Thursday.

Multiple gunshots were fired into a crowd of mourners at an afternoon graveside funeral at Graceland Cemetery in Racine, police sergeant Kristi Wilcox told reporters.

No suspect was in custody. When asked whether multiple shooters might have been involved, Wilcox said she was "not at liberty to say". And she said she could not confirm initial reports that the shooting might have come from a car.

Mayor Cory Mason issued a statement saying he had ordered police to enforce an 11 pm curfew through the weekend for anyone under the age of 18.

"Today's heinous shooting at a cemetery while a family was already mourning the loss of a loved one is a new low for these perpetrators of violence in our community. The violence has got to stop," Mason wrote.

So far this year, the US has seen at least 233 mass shootings with more than 18,000 deaths due to gun violence, according to the nonprofit Gun Violence Archive. A mass shooting is defined as one in which four or more people were injured or killed.

In the latest development of the Buffalo massacre, the accused shooter Payton Gendron pleaded not guilty on Thursday to 25 counts in an indictment returned by a grand jury, court documents showed.

The US has more guns than any other nation in the world, and that number continues to grow each year. It is estimated that there are 400 million guns in the US among the military, police and civilians, and over 393 million of these guns are in civilian hands－the equivalent of 120 firearms per 100 citizens, according to a 2018 report on global firearms holdings by the Switzerland-based Small Arms Survey.

Agencies - Xinhua