Your Weekend Reading: Biden Dares Congress to ‘Do Something’ on Guns
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A teddy bear on a bench at a memorial dedicated to those murdered on May 24 during the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School, in Uvalde, Texas
Photographer: Brandon Bell/Getty Images“For god’s sake do something.” US President Joe Biden pleaded with Congress in an address to the nation this week as the American drumbeat of mass shootings continues seemingly without end. But the chances that death tolls from Buffalo, New York, to Uvalde, Texas, and Tulsa, Oklahoma will spur federal action remain slim. At the state level, New York passed a gun control package that would raise the legal age to buy semiautomatic rifles to 21.
Biden approved sending Ukraine a package of weapons that includes an advanced rocket system, raising the stakes for a war now grinding into its fourth month. But Russia seems to believe time is on its side, and that the allies will splinter as the cost of conflict increases. Despite all of the sanctions, Russia’s coffers are full as commodity prices soar.