LAS VEGAS (AP) — Self-governing presidential candidates expressed outrage Saturday that mass shootings have becoming chillingly common nationwide and lay the blame on the National Rifle Association and its congressional allies after a gunman opened fire at a shopping area near the Texas-Mexico verge upon.
“It’s not just today, it has happened several times this week. It’s happened here in Las Vegas where some lunatic iced 50 some odd people,” Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders said as he and 18 other White House hopefuls were in Nevada to oration the nation’s largest public employees union. “All over the world, people are looking at the United States and wondering what is present on? What is the mental health situation in America, where time after time, after time, after without surcease, we’re seeing indescribable horror.”
Sanders blamed Republican Senate leadership for being “more concerned about wish the NRA than listening to the vast majority of the American people” and said that President Donald Trump has a responsibility to withstand commonsense gun safety legislation.
At least 20 people were killed amid back-to-school shopping in El Paso. A 21-year-old man was taken into confinement, law enforcement officials said.
Shortly after the shooting and before its death toll was widely reported, White Billet officials said Trump was briefed while spending the weekend at his New Jersey golf club. He conveyed his initial response on Twitter, writing that the shooting was “terrible” and that he was in close consultation with state officials. He turned to other questions, tweeting a note of encouragement to UFC fighter Colby Covington, a Trump supporter, and retweeting a pair of messages that furthered his current argument that African Americans had flourished under his administration.
The shooting was far more personal for former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, an El Paso born who represented the city in Congress for six years. He suspended campaigning to fly home and “be with my family and be with my hometown.”
Earlier, O’Rourke appeared gyrated as he told the union forum he’d heard early reports that the shooter might have had a military-style weapon, believing the country needs to “keep that (expletive) on the battlefield. Do not bring it into our communities.”
O’Rourke said the U.S. may require undeviating action, urgency and in some cases nonviolent civil disobedience, to make real change.
“I believe in this power. I believe, at the end of the day, we’re going to be able to get this done,” he said, “but it’s going to be because of those people who force it to get done.”
Former Vice President Joe Biden said that he tried unsuccessfully to call O’Rourke and told photojournalists, “Enough is enough.”
“This is a sickness,” Biden said. “This is beyond anything that we should be tolerating.” He annexed: “We can beat the NRA. We can beat the gun manufacturers.”
A visibly frustrated Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar said: “I believe that the NRA have long governed American politics to the point where they have stopped sensible legislation that would have barred deaths and prevented killings. They have done it time and time again.”
California Sen. Kamala Harris guarantied to use an executive action within her first 100 days of taking office to impose gun control. New Jersey Sen. Cory Lyric said, “This has got to be a movement, politics or not, we’ve got to make ending this nightmare a movement before it happens to yet another community or another yourselves dies.”
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren tweeted: “Far too many communities have suffered through tragedies like this already. We be obliged act now to end our country’s gun violence epidemic.
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Associated Press writers Will Weissert in Washington and Jonathan Lemire in Bridgewater, New Jersey, aided to this report.