CNN correspondent Victor Blackwell was visibly shaken as he reported from the scene of the racially-motivated mass shooting that left 13 people shot, 10 of them fatally.
“Listen, I was counting in the car, talking with my producer. I’ve done 15 of these,” the anchor and correspondent said of the shooting to anchor Alisyn Camerota. “At least the ones that I could count.”
“And we keep having the conversation about, Democrats will say guns, Republicans will say mental health, and nothing will change,” Blackwell added. “And I’ll probably do another one this year. Family after family having nowhere to go with their grief. We’ll get into a political conversation later. But, is this the way we’re supposed to live?”
He added, “Are we destined to just keep doing this? City after city? Have we just resigned that this is what we are going to be?” The veteran journalist is seen wiping his eyes on the air as the network goes to a commercial.
The racially motivated massacre was one of several mass shootings this weekend including one in California where a man opened fire at a church reception. One person was killed and five others were injured. In Houston, two people were killed and three others were wounded at a shooting at a flea market on Sunday.
Local and federal investigators are still piecing together why 18-year-old Peyton Gendron drove 200 miles to Buffalo after researching the demographics of the neighborhood which has the highest concentration of African Americans in the city. Details recently emerged that the man had been in the city at least the day prior where he met and spoke to several members of the community only to return and kill nearly a dozen people the next day. The ages of the victims range from 32 to 86 years old.
The Washington Post is reporting that President Joe Biden and First Lady Dr. Jill Biden traveled to Buffalo this morning “to grieve with the community that lost ten lives in a senseless and horrific mass shooting.”
The Biden went to the scene of the shooting, Tops grocery store and Biden plans to Calle the shooting an act of “terrorism motivated by hateful and perverse ideology that tears at the soul of our nation” and plans to “call on Congress to take weapons of war off our streets.”
“The fact that the president is coming here shows how seriously he takes the issue of availability of guns, mass shootings, hate speech and the things we are dealing with out of this tragedy,” Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown (D) said at a news conference Tuesday. He added that he has asked the White House for “additional resources for the community.”