President Biden was heckled by the father of a mass shooting victim during a White House event celebrating the passage of a federal gun safety law. Biden was delivering a speech on the South Lawn on Monday when he was interrupted by Manuel Oliver, whose 17-year-old son, Joaquin, was among 14 students and three staff members killed at a high school in Parkland, Fl., in 2018, the Guardian reports. “We have to do more than that!” Oliver shouted while standing up and wearing dark sunglasses. Oliver had made clear that he objected to the event being billed as a celebration in the aftermath of a mass shooting that killed 19 children and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, T., on May 24. He wrote on Twitter: “The word CELEBRATION has no space in a society that saw 19 kids massacred just a month ago.”
The confrontation underlined simmering frustration with Biden, who has been accused of failing to meet the moment not only on guns but abortion, climate and other issues. A New York Times/Siena College poll published on Monday put his approval rating at thirty three percent, with sixty four percent of Democratic voters saying the party should nominate a different candidate for president in 2024. The White House gave Biden an opportunity to respond to critics by showcasing the first major federal gun safety bill in three decades, which he signed last month. The law includes provisions to help states keep guns out of the hands of those deemed to be a danger to themselves or others. It also prohibits gun sales to those convicted of abusing unmarried intimate partners and cracks down on gun sales to buyers convicted of domestic violence.