Meeting with New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, in the Oval Office on Tuesday, President Biden described his visit with families of victims of the Uvalde school shooting over the weekend.

Video transcript

JOE BIDEN: You understand that your leadership has taken on a critical role in this global stage, and it really has, galvanizing action on climate change, a global effort to confront violence and extremism and online, like having a [? Christchurch ?] call. And you know, and we want to be-- I want to work with you on that effort, and I want to talk to about what those conversations are like, if you're willing. The United States is a system.

There's an expression by an Irish post. It says too long a suffering makes a stone of the heart. Well, there's an awful lot of suffering. We've been-- I've been to more mass shooting aftermaths than I think any President American history, unfortunately, and it's just-- so much of it is-- much of it is preventable, and the devastation is amazing.

Yesterday, or not-- the day before, I was up-- I was down in Texas, and people sat in a room, about 250 of them I'm in a large room, with me for almost four hours. Not nobody left. They wanted to-- until I spoke to every single person in that room, every single person. They waited till the very end, and the pain is palpable.