Among them is Delecia Smith, a volunteer from the Mobile Overdose Protection Service. The Buffalo resident is sitting under a red canopy tent giving away boxes NARCAN, an Opiod overdose treatment, which she explains is needed because “people here will tend to self-medicate because of the tragedy”.
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“As a country we need some serious reform on how we acquire our weapons,” she adds.
“There should be a longer waiting period and better mental health background checks. Different states also have different rules which makes it easy for people to get [the guns].”
Tensions have also reignited over the rise of racially-based conspiracy theories after Gendron allegedly posted a manifesto online that invoked the idea that white Americans are at risk of being “replaced” by people of colour, an ideology known as “great replacement theory” regularly pushed by Fox TV host Tucker Carlson.
At the White House, Biden’s press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said such sentiments ought to be called out regardless of who was behind them, while on Twitter, Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney singled out her own party’s leadership for enabling the kind of ideology that underpinned the attack.
A man reads scripture at the site of a memorial honoring the victims of Saturday’s shooting Credit:AP
“The House GOP leadership has enabled white nationalism, white supremacy, and anti-semitism,” Cheney wrote.
“History has taught us that what begins with words ends in far worse. @GOP leaders must renounce and reject these views and those who hold them.”
The Buffalo attack is the deadliest mass shooting to take place this year, and follows in the footsteps of other racially motivated events, such as El Paso Walmart shooting in Texas of 2019, which deliberately targeted Latinos and resulting in 23 deaths and 23 injuries, and the 2015 shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal church in Charleston, where nine African Americans were killed during Bible study.
According to the manifesto posted online, it was largely inspired by New Zealand’s Christchurch attack of March 2019, in which white supremacist Brenton Harrison Tarrant killed 51 Muslims after he targeted at two separate mosques.
Gendron has been arraigned on first degree murder charges. He has pleaded not guilty and is expected to be in court for a hearing on Thursday.
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