WASHINGTON – President Biden and Democrats on Capitol Hill, facing a second month of shooting in a week, on Tuesday called for tougher gun laws, a request that was met with urgency by Republicans.
In short, the White House’s scathing remarks prompted Mr. Biden to ask the Senate to pass a ban on assault weapons and close the loopholes in the background check, saying that doing so would “be a common sense measure that will save lives in the future.”
The latest in a string of lawsuits in Washington is the latest in a string of lawsuits: Call for a new gun safety law after a deadly shooting at a Colorado grocery store where 10 people, including a police officer, were killed Monday.
“This is not and should not be a biased issue – it is an American issue,” Mr Biden said. “We have to act.”
While the vote for specific policies such as stricter gun laws and a ban on assault weapons regularly shows widespread support, Republicans in Congress remained all-out on the issue, repeating long-running arguments on Tuesday that gun violence should be addressed through measures such as more policing. Limited gun rights.
“Our members are not very hungry to do things that seem to address it, but they are not really doing anything to fix the problem,” said John Thuen, a South Dakota senator from No. 2 Senate Republican No. 2. .
Even after the 2012 shooting at Connecticut’s Sandy Hook Elementary School, President Barack Obama was unable to pass a strict gun law that killed 30 children and six adults. Since then, little progress has been made at the federal level, and the epidemic of gun violence has intensified.
On Tuesday, Mr. Biden noted that he had to make the announcement to keep the White House flag at half-staff, as they landed less than a week ago in honor of the eight people killed by gunmen in the Atlanta area.
The president said: “Another American city is wounded by gun violence and the resulting trauma.
As a senator, Mr. Biden was a leading supporter of the original Assault Weapons Ban in 1994, which ended a decade later and has never been renewed. Since then, Mr. Biden has been involved in gun control proposals that have gone nowhere in Congress, and has been described by aides as realistic about the difficulty of passing any meaningful legislation this time around.
When the reporter asked if he had the political capital to move forward with gun safety measures, the president expressed uncertainty. “I hope so,” he said, rolling his fingers. “I don’t know. I haven’t done any calculations yet.”
Proponents of the stern gun law said they hoped the latest firing would force the Biden administration to take action.
“I don’t think there’s any question that passing a gun safety law is an incomplete business for Biden,” said John Finblatt, president of Everitown, the organization for gun safety and gun violence prevention, noting Mr. Biden’s record on the issue in the Senate. And the role he played in developing the Obama administration’s response to the Sandy Hook massacre.
Mr Feinblatt said: “It is understandable that the epidemic came before it was addressed,” but in the face of rising crime rates and two mass shootings in less than a week, the Biden administration must now rule as it is the strongest in history. Gun safety. “
On Capitol Hill, legislators quickly parted along biased lines.
Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat with a clear voice on gun control, said congressional inaction has made lawmakers “critical” to ending “full-blown” violence. He noted the optimism of Mr Biden’s personal commitment to the issue.
“This time seems different,” Mr. Blumenthal said at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday. “The dawn of a new era with a president fully committed to the prevention of gun violence. I have heard him in private and in public and I know he shares this passion. In the House and Senate – so do the majority now. “
The House Democrats passed two bills this month aimed at expanding and consolidating gun buyers’ background checks, by enforcing the ban on gun purchases for all gun buyers and extending the time the flag would be waved by the FBI through the national instant check system.
New York Democrat and Majority Leader Senator Chuck Schumer vowed to put the bill to a vote on the Senate floor on Tuesday, and urged Mr. Biden to pass it while also calling for a ban on new attack weapons. The gunman in the Colorado shooting was armed with both a military-style semiautomatic rifle and a pistol.
Republican Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell said he was “open to debate” on gun control measures, but opposed the two House-passed bills.
“Something I’m not attracted to won’t work, and there are deep-seated philosophical differences between Republicans and Democrats about how to deal with gun violence,” he said.
Just before the recent shootings, Democrats began pushing for strict gun control measures that faced long hurdles in the 50-50 Senate. But despite Unified Democratic control, the rapid congressional action seems as elusive as ever.
The two pieces of legislation passed in the House have been considered ineffective and too elaborate by most Republicans; Only eight House Republicans voted to pass a universal background check law. The bill will almost certainly not require the 60 votes needed to clear a filibuster in the set.
Aware of the challenges of passing new gun laws, White House officials said Mr. Biden is putting supportive pressure on what can be done to strengthen existing legislation from the presidency.
After a series of tragedies at Sandy Hook, Mr. Obama chose not to proceed immediately with the law. Instead he asked Vice President Biden to put together a package of proposed measures.
Mr. Baden, who helped pass the landmark Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act as well as a 10-year ban on assault weapons when he was in the Senate, returned five weeks later with a proposal for legislation and executive action, but a background check bill pressured by the Obama administration to pass. Failed.
“The failure to pass the law was one of Obama’s biggest regrets,” said Brady President Chris Brown: United Against Gun Violence, a for-profit group.
Despite long-standing public support for tougher gun laws, increasing calls for action from many Democrats and the declining influence of the National Rifle Association, Mr. Biden faces a political stance on the issue.
According to a poll by the Pew Research Center in 2019, an increasing number of Americans on both sides strongly supported gun laws. There was widespread bipartisan support for some specific measures, including preventing people with mental illness from buying a gun. With a slight majority of Republicans, about 1 percent of Americans choose to ban high-capacity ammunition magazines, while half percent of Republicans, including half, support a ban on assault weapons.
“Wait another minute, put in an hour, take common sense measures that will save lives in the future,” Mr Biden said on Tuesday.
But the challenge for his administration will be to find out how much political capital he is willing to spend on a politically intact issue, given the crisis of other monuments he is facing simultaneously.
White House Press Secretary Jane Sasaki told reporters on Air Force One in Ohio, where the president paid her 1.9 trillion in promotions, “The tragedy just happened last night, so I wouldn’t expect a new proposal in less than 24 hours. . ” Epidemic relief package. While the administration has issued more than 30 executive orders in its first week, none of them took into account gun violence.
So far, Susan Rice, director of the Domestic Policy Council, and Cedric Richmond, director of public relations office fees, have been overseeing the administration’s planned executive actions on guns, as well as plans to provide more funding for gun violence prevention. .
One executive action under consideration is the classification of “ghost guns”, which are kits that allow the buyer to assemble a fully functioning long gun or handgun as weapons. For such classification they need to be serialized and subjected to background checks.
Gun violence prevention groups are forcing the administration to determine what it means to be in the “business” of selling guns. Under current law, people who are in the “business” of selling guns have to do a background check, but that doesn’t mean it is what it is.
Officials said the administration is also working to fulfill Mr. Biden’s campaign promise to invest $ 900 million over eight years in community violence prevention programs.
The limited possibility of passing a modest gun law this year was also displayed on Capitol Hill on Tuesday.
Senator J. Manchin III, a Democrat from West Virginia, has a long-standing bipartisan proposal – Senator Patrick J. Toomey, written with Republicans in Pennsylvania – to close legal loopholes that allow people who buy guns at gun shows or on the Internet to avoid background checks.
But the bill has failed to garner the 60 votes needed to pass the Senate. And Mr. Manchin – who is often in a position to decide whether the Democrats can move forward on their agenda in an evenly divided chamber as the middle of a deeply rooted state – also opposes breaking MLA Phillibster who needs a majority law to win 60 votes.
Mr Manchin said he was interested in reviving the Manchin-Tumi law, but was opposed to a universal background check bill passed by the House, citing the provision of a check requirement for sale among private citizens. Separately, Mr. Tumey told reporters that he believes his law with Mr. Manchin will require additional changes.
“I want to find something I can pass on,” Mr. Toomey told reporters. “It simply came to our notice then. It remains to be seen if we can figure out how to draw that needle. “
Glenn Thrush Contributed report.
