White House gun task force meets
2012-12-21 10:38
Donna Soto (R), mother of Victoria Soto, the first-grade teacher at Sandy Hook Elementary School who was shot and killed while protecting her students, hugs her daughter Karly while mourning their loss at a candlelight vigil. (File, AFP)
Multimedia · User Galleries · News in Pictures
Send us your pictures · Send us your stories
-
Us
An old fashioned story by Mary Louisa Molesworth (1836-1921). The author of beloved children's...
Now R150.00
buy now
Newtown - As residents of Newtown, Connecticut, buried more
victims of the second-deadliest school shooting in US history on Thursday, Vice
President Joe Biden convened a White House task force to search for ways to
quell gun violence in the United States.
With funerals for a half-dozen victims on Thursday, services
have now been held for more than half of the 27 people shot and killed last
Friday by a heavily armed, 20-year-old man who attacked an elementary school
with an assault rifle.
Hundreds of mourners packed into a funeral for Benjamin
Wheeler, 6, filing into the gray stone Trinity Episcopal Church past two rows
of Boy Scouts who lined up outside as a flag-bearing honour guard.
Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy called for residents of
his state to observe a moment of silence at 09:30 on Friday, a week after the
shootings, and his fellow governors from Maine to Kansas followed suit.
The rampage, in which 28 people died, including 20 children
and the gunman, has sparked new discussion on tightening gun laws, a thorny
political issue in the United States, which has a strong culture of individual
gun ownership.
Biden brought together cabinet members, police officials and
others in a 90-minute first meeting of the new White House task force charged
by President Barack Obama with drawing up a plan to tackle gun violence in the
United States.
"We have to have a comprehensive way in which to
respond to the mass murder of our children that we saw in Connecticut,"
Biden told the group, which included Attorney General Eric Holder, Thomas Nee,
president of the National Association of Police Organisations, and other
officials.
"The president is absolutely committed to keeping the
promise that he will act," said Biden, who as a senator authored a crime
bill in 1994 that included a temporary ban on assault weapons.
