The White House says that President Joe Biden will formally call on Congress to "take action" in keeping "weapons of war" off of streets and "keep guns out of the hands of criminals and people who have serious mental illness."

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre made the comments aboard Air Force One to the press as the president traveled to Buffalo, New York on Tuesday to visit the area of a mass shooting there at a supermarket called Tops Market.

As the Associated Press reported, the shooter, Payton Gendron, was described as a quiet, socially awkward student. He once reportedly threatened a murder-suicide while at school and was put under a mental evaluation, then released later the next day when investigators are said to have stopped looking into the matter as serious.

Gendron is accused of shooting and killing 10 people at the Buffalo supermarket. Most of the victims were said to be in their 50s or older. Investigators described the attack as  “racially motivated violent extremism.”

“It is my sincere hope that this individual, this white supremacist who just perpetrated a hate crime on an innocent community, will spend the rest of his days behind bars. And heaven help him in the next world as well,” said New York Gov. Kathy Hochul.

Gendron shot 11 Black people and two white people before he surrendered to police.

UVALDE, Texas — Some people are donating money, others are jumping in their vehicles, feeling the need to comfort the community of Uvalde after the shooting.

Crosses now stand in the heart of Uvalde. Each cross represents people that will be part of this community forever.

Bonnie Fear’s organization, Lutheran Church Charities, brought the crosses to Uvalde’s town square.

Each cross carries a name of a victim with a marker so people can leave a message.

"It could be for them to help express their grief, in the end, it ends up with the family our hope is our family can then get that heart and read the heartfelt messages for their loved one,” Fear says.

“I will always love you, my beautiful granddaughter,” a message reads on the sign of Laya Salazar, from her grandmother.

It is impossible to know what can heal a wound so permanent and deep.

“If they need to, they need any prayers or they need our support silently we just listen and be with them," Fear says.

Albert Villegas is one who felt he had to come to help those impacted by the shooting know they are not alone.

“Faith, you got to have faith when things are going good, and things are going bad," says Villegas.

Villegas and his wife drove from five hours away, through the night, to be in Uvalde to be with those who are suffering. They set up a prayer station.

"People are going to come by and need prayer, say a little prayer, Maybe they need a hug. Comfort them, you know?" Villegas says.

Fear's charity also brought Golden retrievers from Texas and Oklahoma as comfort dogs.

What it will take to heal this town is a question without a clear answer but those who have come are hoping they be part of the journey to find it.

UVALDE, Texas — The mother of the gunman who killed 21 people at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas says she wants people to forgive him.

“I have no words. I have no words to say. I don't know what he was thinking. He had his reasons for doing what he did and please don't judge him. I only want the innocent children who died to forgive me,” Adriana Martínez told reporters from Mexico.

Martínez said she believes her son had his “reasons” for the shooting.

“What reasons could he have had?” a Televisa reporter asked.

“To get closer to those children, instead of paying attention to the other bad things. I have no words, I don't know,” Martínez said.

Investigators say the gunman shot his grandmother at home before going to Robb Elementary School.

She survived and is still in the hospital.

CINCINNATI —

The shooting in Illinois, killing seven and injuring dozens, came days after President Joe Biden signed the strictest gun reform bill in three decades.

The bill imposes stricter background checks on juvenile gun buyers, encourages states to adopt red-flag laws and funds school youth mental health programs.

Monday's Independence Day massacre reignited firearm debates in the United States.

Many are calling for sweeping reform, while others disagree.

Sasha Martin works at Target World, a gun store, training center and firing range in Sharonville, Ohio.

"No, I wouldn't say firearms are the issue," Martin said. "I'd say individuals with mental health problems are the issue."

Martin explained the process of purchasing a gun, including a valid state ID and filling out ATF Form 4473, which is then turned in to the FBI.

The background check can go three ways: proceed, delay or deny.

"I just don't think from my personal experience people who are denied on firearm background checks aren't being prosecuted," Matin said. "I've seen the system work how it was intended, and nothing be done about it."

Gun shops often come under fire for the sale of long rifles, the weapon used in Monday's shooting.

"We really got to focus on the individual people; we can't attack these objects, these tools," Martin said. "I think that will only hurt us as a society."

Some lawmakers like Ohio State Sen. Cecil Thomas disagree.

He is spearheading a state bill that raises the age to buy a long ride, adopts a red flag law, extends the wait time for gun purchases and allows tracking of gun transfers.

"We're not trampling on your right to bear arms," Thomas said. "We just tried to minimize the potential for an incident."

Getting a tighter grip on Ohio's gun laws is something Rev. Dr. Jack Sullivan Jr. believes is desperately needed.

"Anything we can do to make sure that we rid ourselves of weapons of community destruction," Sullivan said.

Sullivan added that if something is to change, it must start with honest conversations.

CHESAPEAKE, Va. (AP) — The Walmart supervisor who fatally shot six co-workers at a store in Virginia bought the gun just hours before the killings and left a note on his phone accusing colleagues of mocking him, authorities said Friday.

“Sorry everyone but I did not plan this I promise things just fell in place like I was led by the Satan,” Andre Bing wrote on a note that was left on his phone, the Chesapeake Police Department said Friday.

Police said the 9 mm handgun used in the Tuesday night shooting was legally purchased that morning and that Bing had no criminal record. They released a copy of the note found on his phone that appeared to redact the names of specific people he mentioned.

It was not clear when the note was written, but in it Bing claimed he was harassed and said he was pushed to the brink by a perception his phone was hacked.

He wrote, “My only wish would have been to start over from scratch and that my parents would have paid closer attention to my social deficits.” Bing died at the scene of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Coworkers of Bing who survived the shooting said he was difficult and known for being hostile with employees. One survivor said Bing seemed to target people and fired at some victims after they were already hit.

Jessica Wilczewski said workers were gathered in a store break room to begin their overnight shift late Tuesday when Bing, a team leader, entered and opened fire. While another witness has described Bing as shooting wildly, Wilczewski said she observed him target certain people.

“The way he was acting — he was going hunting," Wilczewski told The Associated Press on Thursday. "The way he was looking at people’s faces and the way he did what he did, he was picking people out.”

She said she observed him shoot at people who were already on the ground.

“What I do know is that he made sure who he wanted dead, was dead,” she said. “He went back and shot dead bodies that were already dead. To make sure.”

Wilczewski said she had only worked at the store for five days and didn't know with whom Bing got along or had problems. She said being a new employee may have been the reason she was spared.

She said that after the shooting started, a co-worker sitting next to her pulled her under the table to hide. She said that at one point, Bing told her to get out from under the table. But when he saw who she was, he told her, “Jessie, go home.” She said she slowly got up and then ran out of the store.

Former coworkers and residents of Chesapeake, a city of about 250,000 people near Virginia's coast, have been struggling to make sense of the rampage.

Bing's death note rambles at times through 11 paragraphs, with references to nontraditional cancer treatments and songwriting. He says people unfairly compared him to serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, and wrote: “I would have never killed anyone who entered my home.”

And he longs for a wife but says he didn't deserve one.

Some who worked with Bing, 31, said he had a reputation for being an aggressive, if not hostile, supervisor who once admitted to having “anger issues.” But he also could make people laugh and seemed to be dealing with the typical stresses at work that many people endure.

“I don’t think he had many people to fall back on in his personal life,” said Nathan Sinclair, who worked at the Walmart for nearly a year before leaving earlier this month.

During chats among coworkers, “We would be like ‘work is consuming my life.’ And (Bing) would be like, ‘Yeah, I don’t have a social life anyway,’” Sinclair recalled Thursday.

Sinclair said he and Bing did not get along. Bing was known for being “verbally hostile” to employees and wasn’t particularly well-liked. But Sinclair also said there were times when Bing was made fun of and not necessarily treated fairly.

Police have identified the victims as Brian Pendleton, 38; Kellie Pyle, 52; Lorenzo Gamble, 43; Randy Blevins, 70, and Fernando Chavez-Barron, 16, who were all from Chesapeake; and Tyneka Johnson, 22, of nearby Portsmouth. Chavez-Barron's name was released Friday; it had been withheld previously because of his age.

A Walmart spokesperson confirmed in an email that all of the victims worked for the company.

Two others who were shot remained hospitalized, police said Friday. One is still in critical condition, and the other is in fair to improving condition.

Another Walmart employee, Briana Tyler, has said Bing appeared to fire at random.

“He was just shooting all throughout the room. It didn’t matter who he hit,” Tyler told the AP Wednesday.

Six people also were wounded in the shooting, which happened just after 10 p.m. as shoppers were stocking up ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday. Police said they believe about 50 people were in the store at the time.

Bing was identified as an overnight team leader who had been a Walmart employee since 2010. Police said he had one handgun and several magazines of ammunition.

Tyler said the overnight stocking team of 15 to 20 people had just gathered in the break room to go over the morning plan. Another team leader had begun speaking when Bing entered the room and opened fire, Tyler and Wiczewski said.

Tyler, who started working at Walmart two months ago and had worked with Bing just a night earlier, said she never had a negative encounter with him, but others told her he was “the manager to look out for.” She said Bing had a history of writing up people for no reason.

The attack was the second major shooting in Virginia this month. Three University of Virginia football players were fatally shot on a bus Nov. 13 as they returned from a field trip. Two other students were wounded.

The Walmart shooting also comes days after a person opened fire at a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colorado — killing five and wounding 17. Tuesday night’s shooting brought back memories of another attack at a Walmart in 2019, when a gunman killed 23 at a store in El Paso, Texas.

Also on Friday, a person suffered injuries not considered life-threatening after being shot at a Walmart in Lumberton, North Carolina, police said. Investigators described it as an isolated altercation between two people who knew each other.

Wilczewski, who survived Tuesday's shooting in Virginia, said she tried but could not bring herself to visit a memorial in the store's parking lot Wednesday.

“I wrote a letter and I wanted to put it out there,” she said. “I wrote to the ones I watched die. And I said that I'm sorry I wasn't louder. I'm sorry you couldn't feel my touch. But you weren't alone.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — When President Joe Biden speaks about the "scourge" of gun violence, his go-to answer is to zero in on so-called assault weapons.

America has heard it hundreds of times, including this week after shootings in Colorado and Virginia: The president wants to sign into law a ban on high-powered guns that have the capacity to kill many people very quickly.

"The idea we still allow semi-automatic weapons to be purchased is sick. Just sick," Biden said on Thanksgiving Day. "I'm going to try to get rid of assault weapons."

After the mass killing last Saturday at a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs, he said in a statement: "When will we decide we've had enough? ... We need to enact an assault weapons ban to get weapons of war off America's streets."

When Biden and other lawmakers talk about "assault weapons," they are using an inexact term to describe a group of high-powered guns or semi-automatic long rifles, like an AR-15, that can fire 30 rounds fast without reloading. By comparison, New York Police Department officers carry a handgun that shoots about half that much.

A weapons ban is far off in a closely divided Congress. But Biden and the Democrats have become increasingly emboldened in pushing for stronger gun controls — and doing so with no clear electoral consequences.

The Democratic-led House passed legislation in July to revive a 1990s-era ban on "assault weapons," with Biden's vocal support. And the president pushed a ban nearly everywhere that he campaigned this year.

Still, in the midterm elections, Democrats kept control of the Senate and Republicans were only able to claim the slimmest House majority in two decades.

The tough talk follows passage in June of a landmark bipartisan bill on gun laws, and it reflects steady progress that gun control advocates have been making in recent years.

"I think the American public has been waiting for this message," said Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., who has been the Senate's leading advocate for stronger gun control since the massacre of 20 children at a school in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012. "There has been a thirst from voters, especially swing voters, young voters, parents, to hear candidates talk about gun violence, and I think Democrats are finally sort of catching up with where the public has been."

Just over half of voters want to see nationwide gun policy made more strict, according to AP VoteCast, an extensive survey of more than 94,000 voters nationwide conducted for The Associated Press by NORC at the University of Chicago. About 3 in 10 want gun policy kept as is. Only 14% prefer looser gun laws.

There are clear partisan divides. About 9 in 10 Democrats want stricter gun laws, compared with about 3 in 10 Republicans. About half of Republicans want gun laws left as they are and only one-quarter want to see gun laws be made less strict.

Once banned in the United States, the high-powered firearms are now the weapon of choice among young men responsible for many of the most devastating mass shootings. Congress allowed the restrictions first put in place in 1994 on the manufacture and sales of the weapons to expire a decade later, unable to muster the political support to counter the powerful gun lobby and reinstate the weapons ban.

When he was governor of Florida, current Republican Sen. Rick Scott signed gun control laws in the wake of mass shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and a night club in Orlando. But he has consistently opposed weapons bans, arguing like many of his Republican colleagues that most gun owners use them lawfully.

"People are doing the right thing, why would we take away their weapons?" Scott asked as the Senate was negotiating gun legislation last summer. "It doesn't make any sense."

He said more mental health counseling, assessments of troubled students and law enforcement on campus make more sense.

"Let's focus on things that actually would change something," Scott said.

Law enforcement officials have long called for stricter gun laws, arguing that the availability of these weapons makes people less safe and makes their jobs more dangerous.

Mike Moore, chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, the country's third-largest, said it just makes sense to talk about guns when gun violence is rising nationwide, and consider what the government can do to make the streets safer. He is grateful Biden is bringing it up so much.

"This isn't a one-and-done," Moore said of the shooting in Colorado Springs. "These things are evolving all the time, in other cities, at any moment another incident happens. It's crying out for the federal government, for our legislators, to go out and make this change," he said.

On Tuesday, six people were shot dead at a Walmart in Virginia. Over the past six months there has been a supermarket shooting in Buffalo, New York; a massacre of school children in Uvalde, Texas; and the July Fourth killing of revelers in Highland Park, Illinois.

The legislation that Biden signed in June will, among other things, help states put in place "red flag" laws that make it easier for authorities to take weapons from people judged to be dangerous.

But a ban was never on the table.

A 60-vote threshold in the Senate means some Republicans must be on board. Most are are steadfastly opposed, arguing it would be too complicated, especially as sales and varieties of the firearms have proliferated. There are many more types of these high-powered guns today than in 1994, when the ban was signed into law by President Bill Clinton.

"I'd rather not try to define a whole group of guns as being no longer available to the American public," said Republican Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota, who is a hunter and owns several guns, some of them passed down through his family. "For those of us who have grown up with guns as part of our culture, and we use them as tools — there's millions of us, there's hundreds of millions of us — that use them lawfully."

In many states where the bans have been enacted, the restrictions are being challenged in court, gaining strength from a Supreme Court ruling in June expanding gun rights.

"We feel pretty confident, even despite the arguments made by the other side, that history and tradition as well as the text of the Second Amendment are on our side," said David Warrington, chairman and general counsel for the National Association for Gun Rights.

Biden was instrumental in helping secure the 1990s ban as a senator. The White House said that while it was in place, mass shootings declined, and when it expired in 2004, shootings tripled.

The reality is complicated. The data on the effectiveness is mixed and there is a sense that other measures that are not as politically fraught might actually be more effective, said Robert Spitzer, a political science professor at the State University of New York-Cortland and author of "The Politics of Gun Control."

Politically, the ban sparked a backlash, even though the final law was a compromise version of the initial bill, he said.

"The gun community was furious," Spitzer said.

The ban has been blamed in some circles for the Democrats losing control of Congress in 1994, though subsequent research has shown that the loss was likely more about strong, well-funded conservative candidates and district boundaries, Spitzer said.

Still, after Democrat Al Gore, who supported stricter gun laws, lost the 2000 White House race to Republican George W. Bush, Democrats largely backed off the issue until the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012. Even after that, it was not a campaign topic until the 2018 midterms.

Now, gun control advocates see progress.

"The fact that the American people elected a president who has long been a vocal and steadfast supporter of bold gun safety laws — and recently reelected a gun sense majority to the Senate — says everything you need to know about how dramatically the politics on this issue have shifted," said John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety.

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Associated Press writer Nuha Dolby contributed to this report.

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Follow AP's coverage of gun politics at https://apnews.com/hub/gun-politics

Numerous schools in Colorado and Idaho were put on lockdown Wednesday after someone reported threats, which police believe were part of a hoax.

Boulder Police Chief Maris Harold told reporters Wednesday that dispatchers received a call in the morning from a male who said he was going to Boulder High School when the sound of gunshots could be heard in the background.

Boulder Police cleared the school, but there were no confirmed injuries.

Threat calls were also made to schools in Colorado, including in Aspen, Alamosa, Brighton and Canon City. In all the cases, the schools were cleared of any threat.

In Idaho, the Caldwell Police Department said there were a number of "non-legitimate" threats made at several schools Wednesday morning. Officers continue to respond, but they believe the threats are part of a wide-reaching hoax.

"In the past week, similar instances involving hoax calls into schools have occurred in Oregon, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Nevada," the Caldwell Police Department said in a statement.

A spokesperson for the Boulder Police Department said the FBI is now helping investigate the source of the calls.

German media reported that at least six people were killed in a shooting in the northern German city of Hamburg, the second-largest city in the country.

The city's fire service confirmed the number of dead, but it was unclear if there were any people taken to area hospitals, the Guardian reported, citing Focus Online.

German news outlet Deutsche Welle cited police information reporting that law enforcement converged on the city's Alsterdorf area. Reports said that police also announced a "large-scale operation" was carried out in the city's Gross Borstel district nearby.

Germany's RTL News reported, citing officials, that the shooting happened at around 9 p.m. local time when a person or multiple people inside a place of worship began firing upon those inside.

DW reported that the location of the shooting was a Kingdom Hall of Jehovah's Witnesses on Hamburg's Deelböge street.

Police asked residents in the area to evacuate, according to reports.

Authorities in Hamburg used cell phone push alerts to warn residents that the suspects were on the run and had fled the scene after the shooting.

A ban on dozens of semi-automatic rifles cleared the Washington state Legislature on Wednesday and the governor is expected to sign it into law.

High-powered firearms — once banned nationwide — are now the weapon of choice among young men responsible for most of the country’s devastating mass shootings.

The ban comes after multiple failed attempts in the Legislature and in a year that has seen the most mass shootings during the first 100 days of a calendar year since 2009.

The law would cover more than 50 gun models, including AR-15s, AK-47s and similar-style rifles, which fire one bullet per trigger pull and automatically reload for a subsequent shot. The bill bans their future sale, distribution, manufacture and importation, although some exemptions are included for sales to law enforcement agencies and the military in Washington.

The law would go into effect immediately once it's signed by Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee, who has long advocated for such a ban. When the measure passed the state House in March Inslee said he’s believed in it since 1994 when, as a member of the U.S. Congress, he voted to make it a federal law.

“We refuse to accept gun violence as normal. Gun violence, in all its forms, can be prevented,” Inslee tweeted after the legislation first passed the Senate, thanking the Democratic lawmakers who control both chambers.

A weapons ban is far off in the U.S. Congress. But President Joe Biden and other Democrats have become increasingly emboldened in pushing for stronger gun controls — and doing so with no clear electoral consequences.

Nine states including California, New York and Massachusetts, along with the District of Columbia, have already passed similar bans, and the laws have been upheld as constitutional by the courts, according to Washington's Attorney General Bob Ferguson.

When Biden and other lawmakers talk about “assault weapons,” they are using an inexact term to describe a group of high-powered guns or semi-automatic long rifles, like an AR-15, that can fire 30 rounds quickly without reloading. By comparison, New York Police Department officers carry a handgun that shoots about half that much.

During the debate on the Washington state bill, Democrats spoke of frequent mass shootings that have killed people in churches, nightclubs, grocery stores and schools. Sen. Liz Lovelett of Anacortes said that kids' concerns about school shootings need to be addressed.

“They are marching in the streets. They are asking for us to take action,” Lovelett said. “We have to be able to give our kids reasons to feel hopeful.”

Republican state lawmakers opposed the ban, with some contending school shootings should be addressed by remodeling buildings to make them less appealing as targets and others saying it infringes on people's rights to defend themselves.

“HB 1240 clearly violates our state and federal constitutions, which is why it will end up in court immediately,” Sen. Lynda Wilson of Vancouver said.

Some gun-control legislation in other states has been struck down since last year’s landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling, which set new standards for reviewing the nation’s gun laws. The ruling says the government must justify gun control laws by showing they are “consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”

Washington's ban was part of a gun legislation package proposed by Inslee and the state attorney general. The other two bills approved by the Legislature this session include a 10-day waiting period for gun purchases and a bill that would hold gunmakers liable for negligent sales.

The first would allow people whose family members die from gun violence to sue if a manufacturer or seller “is irresponsible in how they handle, store or sell those weapons.” Under the state’s consumer-protection act, the attorney general could file a lawsuit against manufacturers or sellers for negligently allowing their guns to be sold to minors, or to people buying guns legally in order to sell them to someone who can’t lawfully have them.

The second bill would require gun buyers to show they've taken safety training. It would also impose a 10-day waiting period for all gun purchases — something that's already mandatory in Washington when buying a semi-automatic rifle.

Biden signed a sweeping bipartisan gun law last summer, the most significant legislative response to gun violence in decades. The U.S. Congress had imposed restrictions on the manufacture and sale of semi-automatic rifles in 1994 but allowed the restrictions to expire a decade later, lacking the votes to counter the powerful gun lobby.