President Joe Biden visited the community of Buffalo in the wake of the racist mass shooting that occurred at Tops supermarket on May 17, 2022.
Biden, accompanied by first lady Jill Biden, paid his respects at Tops before speaking at the Delavan Grider Community Center to an audience of local politicians and grieving Buffalo residents.
In his address, Biden called the mass shooting an act of white supremacy and domestic terrorism.
“We must refuse to live in a country where Black people going about their weekly grocery shopping can be gunned down by weapons of war deployed in a racist cause,” Biden said. “We must refuse to live in a country where fear and lies are packaged for power and for profit. We must refuse to let violence and division and darkness be our legacy. This is work that requires all of us – presidents and politicians, commentators and citizens. None of us can stay on the sidelines.”
The suspected shooter is 18-year-old Payton Gendron, who allegedly also wrote a 170- page manifesto explaining his rationale for the attack. Among the reasons listed, Gendron wrote he wanted to do his part to prevent other races from overtaking the White race. It’s an act he indicated was inspired by other race-motivated killings, including mosque shooter Brenton Tarrant and Black South Carolina church shooter Dylann Roof.
While most Buffalo residents appreciated Biden’s visit and the empathy shown through his address, they understand more needs to happen to prevent more mass shootings from occurring.
“There’s no way that a civilized country ought to entitle its citizens the right to carry a weapon that was designed, created, manufactured and distributed, solely to kill people in a mass way,” James Giles, pastor and coordinator of the Western New York Peacemakers, told rolling out. “The mentality that exists [in] this country around racism is always going to be here. That’s a long battle, but [gun control] is a short battle that we can win. At least ban those assault weapons … That shooting represented the 199th mass shooting we’ve had in this country so far [in 2022]. We haven’t even reached halfway through the year.”
Other residents, like University of Buffalo political science sophomore Calliou Borden, aren’t as optimistic about any legislative changes in the near future.
“Given where the Senate is, and understanding the institution, Republicans aren’t going to do anything and the Democrats have a tough battle in the House and the Senate given that they have two obstructionist Senators in Krysten Sinema and Joe Manchin,” Borden said. “In order to actually do something, they’re going to have to get rid of the filibuster because it’s going to require 60 votes to get universal background checks, which we actually need, but that’s not going to happen because the votes aren’t there, the math isn’t there.”
