President Joe Biden visited Lewiston on Friday to pay his respects to the families of the 18 people who were killed in the worst mass shooting in state history.
The President and First Lady Jill Biden placed a bouquet of white flowers at a makeshift memorial outside of Schemengees Bar and Grille, one of two sites where a gunman opened fire and committed the deadliest mass shooting in the U.S. so far this year.
President Biden later joined members of Maine's congressional delegation and Gov. Janet Mills for brief remarks outside of Just-in-Time Recreation, a bowling alley and the other site of the gunman's rampage.
The President said such shootings are too common and he said it was time for policymakers to come together for a solution to gun violence. Biden did not make a direct appeal to Congress to pass an assault weapons ban, as he did during the immediate aftermath of last week's mass shootings. But he called for "commonsense" measures to protect families and communities.
"Because regardless of our politics this about protecting our freedom to go to a bowling alley, a restaurant, a school, a church without being shot and killed," he said.
The president said the killings in Lewiston were another example of how such violence often happens in places where people never expect it and that never make the news.
He also met with first responders and frontline officers. Biden said the recent tragedy in Lewiston opens up painful wounds for Americans across the country, who have lost loved ones due to gun violence.
"Jill and I have done too many of these. Jill and I are here though, on behalf of the American people to grieve with you and to make sure you know that you're not alone," he said.
He was expected to meet with family members privately and he described their experience as a trauma that will never leave them.
Congresswoman Chellie Pingree and U.S. Senators Susan Collins and Angus King joined Gov. Janet Mills and Lewiston Mayor Carl Sheline to thank the president and First Lady for visiting.
