“I don’t want this to happen again,” Mia Cirillo, a girl who bleeds on her boyfriend to escape a Texas high school shooter, said Wednesday before the U.S. Congress under pressure to take action on firearms.
On May 24, an 18-year-old high school student killed 19 students and two teachers with a machine gun at a school in Yuvaldi, west of San Antonio. During a Capitol hearing on “the scourge of gun violence,” the 11-year-old girl said the shooter “said good night to my school and shot her in the head. Then he shot at some of my classmates and at the blackboard.” “When I got close to the backpacks, he shot my friend who was right next to me and I thought he was coming back into the room,” the bespectacled girl added in the video testimony. “So I took some blood and smeared it all over the place… I was calm. Then I grabbed my school phone and called 911.” Mia Cirillo has confirmed that she no longer feels safe at school. “I don’t want this to happen again,” the address to members of Congress says. Her father Miguel, who was present at the hearing, said that Mia “is no longer the little girl he used to play with”. “Schools are no longer safe, something has to change,” he pleaded.
stubbornness or stagnation
Congress, which is now discussing limited gun regulation after decades of inaction, heard Roy Guerrero, Yuvaldi’s pediatrician, describe the bodies of children as “crumbled”, some “headless” and “torn to shreds” by bullets. “What I can’t understand is that our politicians let us down because of stubbornness or inertia or both,” he said.
As for Zenita Everhart, whose 21-year-old son survived a racist supermarket massacre in Buffalo last month, she said: “My son Zaire has a hole on the right side of his neck, two on his back and one on his chest. left leg from an AR (assault rifle) bullet. -15″. “When I clean his wounds, I can still feel the fragments of the bullet in his back,” she added. of your sons,” Everhart continued. US President Joe Biden has repeatedly promised to take action against this terrible scourge that successive governments have so far failed to eradicate. But in a country where one in three adults owns at least one gun, conservatives categorically against any measure that violates the rights of “law-abiding citizens.” Joe Biden’s small majority in Congress prevents a gun law from being passed, so the challenge is to find measures that can get Republican support.
No regulation by decree
Biden confirmed on Wednesday during a satirical television program that he did not intend to issue an executive order to regulate firearms outside the provisions of the Constitution, taking the opportunity to criticize former President Donald Trump. Comedian Jimmy Kimmel asked him, “Can’t there be an executive order? Trump handed them out like Halloween candy.” Joe Biden responded, “What I don’t want to do (…) is emulate Trump and the way he abused the Constitution and his constitutional power.”
Limited proposals are currently being discussed in the Senate, such as criminal or psychological background checks for individual gun buyers, something organizations have been calling for for years. And Democratic Party leader Chuck Schumer said on Thursday that the Senate would vote on “measures to regulate firearms,” without giving further details.
Meanwhile, the House of Representatives voted Wednesday night on another major bill that could allow a ban on the sale of semi-automatic rifles to those under 21 and the sale of high-capacity magazines, among other things. The Republican opposition has sharply criticized these measures. Thus, it seems impossible for him to get into the Senate, as he would need the support of ten governors due to the prescribed majority rule.
