A White House reporter corrected White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre straight to her face on the facts related to a school shooting in Nashville, Tennessee.
A 28-year-old female active shooter entered Covenant School through a side door Monday and killed at least three children and three adults, police said. Police encountered the suspect on the second floor of the building and fatally shot her.
After being briefed on the tragedy, Jean-Pierre made a wrongful statement about the victims.
“We can’t keep seeing what we saw today. Right now, we’re hearing six kids — six elementary [school] kids dead,” the press secretary said.
“Three kids and three adults,” a reporter interjected.
Police said the shooter, who has yet to be publicly identified, was armed with at least two assault-style rifles and a handgun, and opened fire on the first and second floors of the building, authorities said. Police encountered and killed her at 10:27 a.m. (RELATED: Biden To Call For More Gun Control In Town Rocked By Mass Shooting)
At the start of the briefing, Jean-Pierre pointed fingers at Republicans for opposing an “assault weapons ban.”
“He [President Joe Biden] wants Congress to act,” Jean-Pierre said. “Because enough is enough. In his State of the Union, the president called on Congress to do something, to stop the epidemic of gun violence that is tearing families apart, tearing communities apart. How many more children have to be murdered before Republicans in Congress will step up and act to stop the assault weapons ban?”
President Joe Biden has repeatedly pledged to ban “assault rifles” after a series of mass shootings that have occurred throughout his presidency.
“I call on Congress again to pass my assault weapons ban,” Biden said in an address about the shooting. “It’s about time that we begin to make some more progress.”
The Biden administration witnessed several major mass shootings in the past two years, most notably the shootings at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, and at a Lunar New Year event in Monterey Park, California.