Arizona Republican Andy Biggs has accused Democrats of adding to the trauma of 11-year-old Uvalde shooting survivor Miah Cerrillo for political gain by having her record her testimony describing her experience on camera.

“It’s particularly pernicious and outrageous to take an 11-year-old child, who graphically described how she spread a classmate’s blood upon her and feigned her own death, to make her relive that,” Mr Biggs said.

Maryland Democrat Kweisi Mfume represents large areas of Baltimore, a city where deaths from gun violence have increased in the last half-decade.

He said that if Congress can’t pass significant gun control legislation, “I really believe that we are doomed in our fight against murderers and their guns, and the evil and the pain that they spread.”

Louisiana Republican Clay Higgins, a former sheriff’s captain, grew frustrated with the Buffalo police commissioner when he didn’t answer a yes or no question regarding if he would seize someone’s guns based on an anonymous tip.

Mr Higgins told Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia that “you’re a police commissioner, a thin blue line brother, sworn to uphold the Constitution, and you’re saying you’d seize those weapons. I see that as a problem”.

New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez blasted the gun industry and its lobbyists.

She noted that some makers of guns have seen their profits double in the last few years.

She said the profits were “one thing more important to lobbyists and the gun industry than children and houses of faith”.

“This is about blood money,” she added.

Following the shooting in Uvalde, Texas, a woman in West Virginia reportedly shot and killed a man who had started firing an AR-15 into a crowd at a party.

Georgia Republican Andrew Clyde said the man had obtained the firearm illegally.

“Criminals will obtain their weapons however they want,” he said. “They will get them illegally. More gun laws are not going to stop that.”

New York City Mayor Eric Adams has told Georgia Republican Jody Hice that many guns seized on NYC streets come from his state.

Mr Hice asked Mr Adams if it was accurate that despite it being outside the bounds of the law for many people to carry guns in New York, police are finding them in “record numbers”.

Mr Adams said it was accurate, adding “and many come from Georgia”.

A paediatrician who responded to the massacre in Uvalde, Texas gave gripping testimony on Wednesday and described hearing families shouting the names of their children and begging hospital staff for information about their loved ones.

“Those mothers’ cries, I will never get out of my head,” Dr Roy Guerrero told lawmakers at a hearing of the House Oversight Committee called to hear stories of gun violence from families of victims and first responders.

“I know I’ll never forget what I saw that day,” added Dr Guerrero.

He would go on in his testimony to describe the brutal damage that the high-powered semiautomatic weapon used by the Uvalde shooter did to the bodies of children killed in the attack.

Describing a gruesome scene at a Texas hospital where he and others worked to save victims of the shooting, he recalled seeing two children who had been “decapitated”.

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The police chief who responded to the Buffalo mass shooting has hit back at the Republican argument against tighter gun control measures, saying that the security guard shot and killed in the massacre was the proverbial “good guy with a gun”.

Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia testified before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday morning where lawmakers heard from victims and witnesses of the latest deadly mass shootings to ravage families and communities across America.

He spoke about Aaron Salter Jr., the security guard at the Tops Friendly Market who was among the 10 Black people killed in the racist massacre in Buffalo, New York, on 14 May.

“Aaron was a good guy and was no match for what he went up against, a legal AR-15 with multiple high-capacity magazines. He had no chance,” he testified.

In total, 13 people were shot by self-proclaimed racist and white supremacist Payton Gendron in the mass shooting at a Tops Friendly Market store in Buffalo back on 14 May.

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New York City Mayor Eric Adams called for a ban on assault weapons, bipartisan gun control legislation, and federal aid to cities and states to target the causes of violent crime.

“Ladies and gentlemen, it is high noon in America. Time for every one of us to decide where we stand on the issue of gun violence,” Mr Adams told the House Oversight Committee. “Time to decide if it is more important to protect the profits of gun manufacturers or the lives of our children. Time to decide if we are going to be a nation of laws or a confederation of chaos.”

He called for federal aid to “dam all the rivers that lead to this sea of violence. Common-sense gun reform must become the law of the land”.

Zeneta Everhart’s son worked at the Tops supermarket in Buffalo on 14 May when a racist gunman entered the store and began shooting.

The mother connected the shooting to the founding of the US.

“America is inherently violent,” she said. “My ancestors brought to America through the slave trade were the first currency of America.”

Ms Everhart noted that she has often heard that mass shootings don’t reflect who we are as a country.

“Hear me clearly,” she said. “This is exactly who we are.”

Her son Zaire Goodman, 21, was injured while helping a customer in the car park, acting dead as the gunman walked by. Ms Everhart noted that the gunman received a shotgun on his 16th birthday.

“For Zaire’s 16th birthday, I bought him a few video games, some headphones, a pizza and a cake,” she said. “What in the world is wrong with this country? Children should not be armed with weapons. Parents who provide their children with guns should be held accountable.”

“Let me paint a picture for you – My son Zaire has a hole in the right side of his neck, two on his back and another on his left leg. Caused by an exploding bullet from an AR-15,” she said. “As I clean those wounds I can feel pieces of that bullet in his back.”

“I want you to picture that exact scenario for one of your children,” she said. “This should not be your story or mine.”

“You are elected because you have been chosen and are trusted to protect us, but let me say here today, I do not feel protected,” she told lawmakers. “No citizen needs an AR-15.”

Speaking to members unwilling to pass gun control measures, she said, “I invite you to my home to help me clean Zaire’s wounds, so you may see up close the damage that has been caused to my son and my community”.