Five people were killed at a LGBTQIA+ nightclub by a 22-year-old gunman in Colorado on Saturday, November 19.
The suspect, Anderson Aldrich, will face five counts of first-degree murder and five counts of a bias-motivated crime causing bodily injury.
President Biden stated that “the LGBTQIA+ community has been subjected to horrific hate violence in recent years. Gun violence continues to have a devastating and particular impact on LGBTQIA+ communities across our nation and threats of violence are increasing.”
According to the Human Rights Campaign in its annual report, 23 transgender and gender-nonconforming people have been killed in the US IN 2022.
Transgender people of color are disproportionately affected, as they count for 81% of the deaths this year, with 59% of the victims being black.
Transgender women are also targeted, as 81% of the victims recorded at the time of publication were women.
Biden called this series of attacks an “epidemic of violence and murder against transgender women – especially transgender women of color”
The President also noted that “places that are supposed to be safe spaces of acceptance and celebration should never be turned into places of terror and violence. Yet it happens far too often,” noted Biden.
Biden’s administration is committed to addressing the “public health epidemic of gun violence in all of its forms,” adding that, earlier this year, he signed the “most significant gun safety law in nearly three decades. “We must do more. We need to enact an assault weapon of war off America’s streets,” stated the President.
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