There was a tragic mass shooting at a private Christian elementary school in Nashville, Tennessee, on Monday that resulted in the heinous murders of three young children and three adult employees before the shooter was eventually shot and killed by responding police officers.
President Joe Biden sought to address the terrible incident during a scheduled White House event just hours later, but not until after he had callously joked with the audience about eating ice cream, the Daily Wire reported.
He also made some eyebrow-raising remarks about a group of "good-looking kids" in the audience who were all siblings and regaled them with tales of his own upbringing with multiple siblings before eventually speaking more somberly about what had just occurred in Nashville a few hours earlier.
It was Monday afternoon in the East Room of the White House that President Biden delivered remarks at the Small Business Administration's Women's Business Summit and began the event by cracking jokes about ice cream.
"My name is Joe Biden. I’m Dr. Jill Biden’s husband. And I eat Jeni’s ice cream -- chocolate chip. I came down because I heard there was chocolate chip ice cream," the president joked. "By the way, I have a whole refrigerator full upstairs. You think I’m kidding? I’m not."
Biden: "My name is Joe Biden. I'm Dr. Jill Biden's husband. And I ate Jeni's ice cream. Chocolate chip. I came down because I heard there was chocolate chip ice cream. I have a whole refrigerator full upstairs." pic.twitter.com/W3vu3XXSgU
— Washington Free Beacon (@FreeBeacon) March 27, 2023
Immediately after that, Biden then welcomed everybody to the White House, asked about the "good-looking kids" in the audience, and proceeded to tell humorous stories about what it had been like for him growing up with two brothers and a sister.
He eventually said, "Before I begin to speak, and the reason I spent a little time on the kids, I -- I just want to speak very briefly about the school shooting in Nashville, Tennessee." Biden stated that the incident was "heartbreaking," a "family’s worst nightmare," and that such instances of gun violence in schools was "ripping at the very soul of the nation."
He then inaccurately stated that the shooter wielded "two AK-47" rifles in the deadly attack, and said, "So I call on Congress, again, to pass my assault weapons ban. It’s about time that we begin to make some more progress."
However, that solemn moment aside, Biden went on to crack more jokes during his speech and even seemed to invite everyone up to his residence to eat ice cream with him afterward, if he were "allowed" to do so, and also kidded that his lengthy political career could be summed up by him being known for just "two things: chocolate chip ice cream and Ray-Ban sunglasses."
President Biden's call for Congress to act on his strict gun control proposals seemed to echo what White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre had said just about an hour earlier during Monday's press briefing when she appeared to blame Republican lawmakers -- and not the actual shooter -- for the tragedy that had just occurred, due to their resistance to passing more gun control laws.
"How many more children have -- have to be murdered before Republicans in Congress will step up and act to pass the assault weapons ban; to close loopholes in our background -- in our -- in our background check system; or to require the safe storage of guns?" Jean-Pierre asked.
The insistence from both Biden and Jean-Pierre for Congress to act swiftly to pass more gun control is likely because there is virtually nothing else that he can do unilaterally with respect to his clear intent to infringe upon the Second Amendment with more and stricter gun control laws, as Biden himself acknowledged Tuesday while speaking briefly with reporters.
"I have gone the full extent of my executive authority to do, on my own, anything about guns," Biden admitted, then added, "The Congress has to act. The majority of the American people think having assault weapons is bizarre; it’s a crazy idea. They’re against that. And so, I think the Congress should be passing the assault weapons ban."
