President Joe Biden on Tuesday, March 14, traveled to Monterey Park to visit families of victims of the Jan. 21 mass shooting and to promote gun-control laws and a new executive order aimed at stemming violence nationwide.
While leaders and gun control advocates crowded inside the Boys & Girls Club of the San Gabriel Valley, many others lined streets outside to catch a glimpse of the president’s motorcade, and take in the presidential visit in the wake of the tragedy at the Star Ballroom Dance Studio that left 11 people dead.
Here is the complete text of Biden’s remarks, released Wednesday by the White House.
The Boys & Girls Club of West San Gabriel ValleyMonterey Park, California1:37 P.M. PDT, Tuesday, March 14Good afternoon. (Applause.) Thank you. Thank you. Please have a seat, if you have one. (Laughter.)
Good afternoon. Saturday, January 21st, 2023, Lunar New Year, a time to enjoy. A ballroom dance studio, a place of happiness, friendship, and belonging. People across backgrounds and generations celebrating their cultural roots and bonding through ballroom song and dance.
A place of refuge where immigrants have lived for years, supported new immigrants who just arrived, becoming not just friends but family.
But as we all saw, a day of festivity and light turned into a day of fear and darkness. A holiday of hope and possibilities marked by horror and pain. Vibrant dances and music replaced by vigils and memorials. Eleven souls taken. Nine injured. Private mourning made public.
That sense of safety shattered. Survivors who will always carry the physical and emotional scars. Families left behind who will never be the same.
One of the worst mass shootings in California history. A tragedy that has pierced the soul of this nation, here in Monterey Park, in the San Gabriel Valley, the heart of the Asian American community.
My dear friend, Judy Chu, former Mayor of Monterey Park and your Congresswoman and Chair of the…
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