An armful of white flowers and a sign of the cross: the Bidens gathered on Tuesday May 17 in Buffalo, where ten African-American people died on Saturday, victims of a racist massacre.
Read alsoItinerary of the online radicalization of Payton Gendron, author of the Buffalo massacre
Shortly after arriving in this northeastern US city, the US President and his wife Jill Biden visited the Tops supermarket, where one of the worst racist massacres in recent US history took place. -United.
Under a dazzling sun, they advanced towards bouquets, words and candles piled up at the foot of a tree, in a silence disturbed only by the breath of the wind and the clicking of cameras.
Jill Biden laid an armful of white flowers.
Joe Biden, after removing his sunglasses, signed himself.
The presidential couple have planned to meet families of victims, members of rescue teams and local officials, before the president delivers a speech at 17:00 GMT.
The 79-year-old Democrat wants to call the massacre "
for what it is: terrorism driven by a hateful and evil ideology, an ideology that tears at the soul of our country
," according to a White House official.
The Buffalo massacre comes as a cruel reminder that Joe Biden, elected on a message of unity, has so far failed to appease an America plagued by racial hatred and gun violence.
Fire arms
The President, knowing full well that his party does not have a sufficient majority there, nevertheless wants to call on Congress on Tuesday to "
act so that weapons of war do not circulate in our streets
" and so that "
weapons fire do not end up in the hands of criminals or people with serious mental illnesses.
»
The Democrat has long called for a ban on assault weapons - like the one used on Sunday.
This is what New Zealand did, for example, after the racist massacre against mosques in Christchurch in 2019, a massacre which was also inspired by the alleged murderer of Buffalo, Payton Gendron, 18 years old.
Read also“Weapons are in the DNA of the United States”: journey to the heart of American excess
Joe Biden would also like to impose a criminal and psychiatric background check on people buying firearms.
But he comes up against a Republican opposition very attached to the constitutional right to bear arms, and the powerful lobby of the sector, the NRA.
The organization Gun Violence Archive has already counted more than 200 "
mass shootings
" in the United States this year, during which at least four people were injured or killed.
Ten per week on average.
'Motivated by hate'
Including the one perpetrated on Saturday by this young white man, who, with his assault rifle, committed "
a racist crime motivated by hate
" according to the authorities.
Before the massacre, Payton Gendron published a 180-page manifesto, where he defined himself as "
fascist
", "
racist
", " anti-
Semite
" and claimed the conspiracy theory of the "
great replacement
".
Joe Biden often recalls that he had decided to run for the White House after seeing the ultra-right parading in August 2017 in Charlottesville (Virginia, south).
A young woman was killed after a neo-Nazi sympathizer drove into a group of anti-racist protesters.
Since his election, he has promised to repair the "
soul
" of an America which would be, in essence, united.
But it lacks the levers to take action.
Read alsoThe Orlando shooting rekindles the debate on gun control in the United States
Constrained by its excessively thin parliamentary majority, faced with conservative states endowed with extensive prerogatives, limited by a Supreme Court now firmly anchored on the right, it had to content itself with acting at the margins, by decrees, on the control of firearms. fire.
Joe Biden, who has promised to protect African Americans, has also failed to pass federal legislation protecting access to the ballot box for minorities, threatened in the Southern states at the hands of Republicans.