U.S. President Joe Biden announced that the Department of Justice will give more than $231 million to states for crisis intervention projects, such as red-flag programs, in an effort to reduce gun violence.

Tuesday's announcement came on the five-year anniversary of the 2018 Parkland high school shooting in Florida, in which a gunman killed 17 people.

Biden said in a statement that extreme risk protection orders, or so-called red-flag laws, "could potentially have stopped shooters in Parkland and other tragedies."

Biden has long championed red-flag laws, which allow a judge to take away a firearm from someone based on the suspicion that the owner could use it to harm themselves or others.

The $231 million will go to 49 states, territories and Washington, D.C., to help them create and implement such programs as well as mental health and substance use treatment courts and veterans' treatment courts.

The funding comes by way of the bipartisan gun safety bill, which Biden signed into law in June. The bill allocated $750 million to help states administer red-flag laws and other intervention programs, and it includes funding for mental health treatment.

'We must do more'

Biden also called on Congress to act against America's epidemic of gun violence, one day after a new massacre on a Michigan university campus killed four people and injured five.

"Too many American communities have been devastated by gun violence," he said.

"I have taken action to combat this epidemic in America, including a historic number of executive actions and the first significant gun safety law in nearly 30 years, but we must do more," he said.

Biden has unsuccessfully called on Congress to reinstate a national ban on assault rifles, which existed from 1994 to 2004, but is running up against opposition from Republicans who are staunch defenders of the constitutional right to bear arms and have had a narrow majority in the House of Representatives since January.

The month with most mass shootings in nearly five years

Gun violence is alarmingly common in the United States, a country where there are more guns than people and where attempts to clamp down on their spread are always met with stiff resistance.

The university shooting was the second on a school campus in the midwestern U.S. state in 15 months, Representative Elissa Slotkin underscored at a press conference, saying, "If this is not a wake-up call to do something, I don't know what is."

In November 2021, four students were killed and seven other people wounded when a 15-year-old male student opened fire at Oxford High School in the rural town of Oxford, Michigan.

"I am filled with rage that we have to have another press conference to talk about our children being killed in their schools," said Slotkin, calling for action on gun violence.

The United States has witnessed 52 mass shootings in January 2023, making it the month with most mass shootings in nearly five years, according to data from research group Gun Violence Archive (GVA), which views an incident to be a mass shooting if four or more people are shot, wounded or killed, excluding the gunman.

Among them, in California, 11 people were killed as they welcomed the Lunar New Year at a dance hall popular with older Asian Americans.

The data also showed that in January more than 3,600 people died from gun-related incidents and more than 2,700 people were injured.

 In 2022, more than 600 mass shootings occurred in the U.S. in which at least four people were killed or wounded, according to GVA.

(With input from agencies)