Father of shooting victim interrupts White House event on gun bill

WASHINGTON, July 11 (Xinhua) -- Manuel Oliver, whose son was killed in the 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Florida, interrupted Monday a White House event on the gun bill that U.S. President Joe Biden signed last month.

Oliver stood up from the audience seat on the lawn and shouted to Biden when the president was delivering remarks on the bill and discussed America's gun violence. The heckler's son, Joaquin, was among the 17 victims, including 14 students, of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 14, 2018.

"We have to do more than that," Oliver said before being escorted out of the event, which the White House held to "celebrate" the passage of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, less than two months after 19 children and two teachers were shot and killed at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.

"The word CELEBRATION has no space in a society that saw 19 kids massacred just a month ago," Oliver tweeted before attending the event. "Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.' Not me, not Joaquin."

"There's nothing to celebrate," Oliver told Miami Herald later. "It's a big lie. We lie between ourselves thinking we have a solution to this when we actually don't."

Monday's event at the White House was attended by advocates from various gun violence prevention groups and survivors and family members of victims of mass shootings from across the United States.

Biden signed into law what has been described as a gun safety bill on June 25 amid nationwide demonstrations against gun violence and political inaction.

There have been more than 23,200 deaths from gun violence and 331 mass shootings across the United States over the past six months or so, according to the latest data from the Gun Violence Archive.