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2 women are killed at a church in Iowa, hours after a shooting near Milwaukee
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Two more shootings occurred across the U.S. on Thursday, one deadly in Iowa, adding to a national toll of carnage even as President Joe Biden addressed the nation and called on Congress to take action to curb firearm violence across the country.
Over the span of a few hours Thursday, two women were shot and killed outside a church in Ames, Iowa, just hours after police said two people were shot at a cemetery south of Milwaukee, Wis.
The Thursday shootings came one day after a gunman killed his surgeon and three other people at a Tulsa medical office, and are the latest in a series of shootings in United States including the deadly school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, and an attack on a supermarket in Buffalo, New York.
The Oklahoma shootings were the 233rd mass shooting in the U.S. this year.
In Iowa, two women were killed outside a church parking lot. The gunman is now dead, though his cause of death is still being investigated, authorities said.
"I can tell you that he was not killed by officers," Chief Deputy Nicholas Lennie of the Story County Sheriff's Office said Thursday night.
The Story County Sheriff's Office received multiple 911 calls about shots being fired outside of Cornerstone Church at about 6:51 p.m., Lennie said.
Church services were being held inside, but as of late Thursday night there was no estimation about how many people were in the building, Lennie said.
No motive has yet been found.
"We're still investigating to identify if it was a targeted attack, or if it was a random attack," Lennie said.
Hours earlier, at about 2:30 p.m., police said multiple shots were fired at the Graceland Cemetery in Racine, Wis., about 30 miles south of Milwaukee.
Ascension All Saints Hospital, which is next to the cemetery, was treating an unspecified number of victims, according to The Associated Press.
The AP also reported that it was not immediately known if any suspects were in custody.
During his nationally televised speech on Thursday, Biden called for a ban on high-capacity magazines, background checks, red flag laws and a repeal of the immunity that protects gun manufacturers from legal liability if their weapons are used in violence.
"There are too many other schools, too many other day places that have become killing fields, battlefields here in America," Biden said Thursday evening. "The issue we face is one of consciousness and common sense... I want to be very clear. This is not about taking away anyone's guns. It's not about vilifying gun owners."
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