
President Joe Biden addressed Nashville's deadly school shooting while speaking at an event in Durham, North Carolina, Tuesday, reiterating his call for Congress to pass an assault weapons ban and saying there was a "moral price to pay for inaction."
"As a nation we owe these families more than our prayers," Biden said of the families of the six people who were killed Monday when a 28-year-old former student opened fire at the Covenant School in Nashville. "We owe them action."
"We have to do more to stop this gun violence from ripping communities apart, ripping apart the soul of this nation, to protect our children, so they learn how to read and write instead of duck and cover in a classroom," he said.
The president called himself a "Second Amendment guy," noting he owns shotguns. But he characterized the weapons often used in mass shootings as "weapons of war."
"Why in God's name do we allow these weapons of war on our streets?" he asked.
The president pointed to bipartisan gun safety legislation he signed into law last year, after the mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, saying, "Don't tell me we can't do more together."
"It's a common sense issue," Biden said. "We have to act now."