WASHINGTON – In the face of the second mass shootout in a week, President Biden and Democrats on Capitol Hill on Tuesday called for swift action to enact tougher gun laws, an appeal that was immediately met with the opposition blocking by Republicans.
In short, gloomy comments from the White House, Biden asked the Senate to approve the ban on assault weapons and close the background check gaps, saying that this would be “common sense measures that will save lives in the future”.
His demand for action was the most recent in what has become a painful ritual in Washington: making a new appeal for gun safety legislation after a deadly shooting, this one in a Colorado supermarket where 10 people, including a police officer, were killed. on Monday .
“This is not and should not be a party issue – it is an American issue,” said Biden. “We have to act.”
But while polls regularly show broad support for stricter firearms laws and specific policies, such as a ban on assault weapons, Republicans in Congress remained unwavering on the subject, repeating longstanding arguments on Tuesday that armed violence should be addressed through measures such as more policing, rather than limiting gun rights.
“There is not a big appetite among our members to do things that seem to be solving the problem, but in reality they do nothing to solve the problem,” said Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the Senate’s second Republican.
President Barack Obama failed to pass tougher gun legislation, even after the 2012 shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, which left 20 children and six adults dead. Since then, little progress has been made at the federal level, even as the epidemic of armed violence has spread.
On Tuesday, Biden noted that he needed to write a proclamation to keep the White House flags in half frame because they had already been lowered to honor eight people killed by a sniper in the Atlanta area less than a week earlier.
“Another American city was marked by armed violence and the resulting trauma,” said the president.
As a senator, Biden was a prominent supporter of the original ban on assault weapons in 1994, which expired a decade later and was never renewed. Since then, Biden has been involved in other gun control proposals that have gone nowhere in Congress, and he has been described by advisers as realistic about the difficulty of passing any significant legislation this time around.
When asked by a reporter whether he had the political capital to move forward with gun security measures, the president expressed uncertainty. “I hope so,” he said, crossing his fingers. “I don’t know. I haven’t done any counting yet.”
Supporters of stricter firearms laws said they hoped the latest shootings would prompt the Biden government to act.
“I don’t think there is any doubt that passing firearms safety legislation is an unfinished business for Biden,” said John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety, an organization for the prevention of armed violence, looking at the history of Biden on the matter in the Senate and the role he played in developing the Obama administration’s response after the Sandy Hook massacre.
“It is understandable that addressing the pandemic came first,” said Feinblatt, “but in the face of rising crime rates and two mass shootings in less than a week, the Biden government now has to govern as if it were the strongest in history. weapons security. “
At the Capitol, lawmakers quickly split into party lines.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, a outspoken voice in gun control, said that Congressional inaction made lawmakers “complicit” in allowing “completely predictable” violence to be brought under control. He seemed optimistic, citing Biden’s personal commitment to the issue.
“This looks different this time,” Blumenthal said on Tuesday at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. “The dawn of a new era, with a president totally committed to preventing armed violence. I know from hearing him privately and publicly that he shares that passion. As are the majorities now – in the House and in the Senate ”.
House Democrats passed two bills this month aimed at expanding and strengthening background checks for arms buyers, applying them to all arms buyers and extending the time the FBI has to examine those flagged by the national security system. instant verification.
Senator Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat and majority leader, promised on Tuesday to put the projects to a vote in the Senate floor, and Biden asked for his approval while calling for a new ban on assault weapons. The shooter in the Colorado shooting was armed with a military-style semi-automatic rifle and a pistol.
Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, said he was “open to discussion” around gun control measures, but that he opposed the two bills passed by the House.
“What doesn’t appeal to me is something that doesn’t work, and there have been profound philosophical differences between Republicans and Democrats about how to deal with armed violence,” he said.
Even before the recent shootings, Democrats began to adopt stricter gun control measures that faced severe adversity in the 50-50 year old Senate. But even with unified Democratic control, quick action by Congress seems as elusive as ever.
The two pieces of legislation passed in the House were found to be ineffective and very expansive by most Republicans; only eight House Republicans voted in favor of universal background check legislation. The bills would almost certainly not bring together the 60 votes needed to clear a Senate obstruction.
Aware of the challenges of passing new gun laws, White House officials said, Biden, since taking office, has been lobbying his advisers on what can be done to strengthen existing legislation with presidential authority.
After the terrible tragedy at Sandy Hook, Obama chose not to go ahead with the legislation immediately. Instead, he asked Biden, then vice president, to put together a package of proposed measures.
Biden, who helped pass the historic Brady Arms Violence Prevention Act, as well as a 10-year ban on assault weapons while in the Senate, returned five weeks later with proposals for legislation and executive action, but the Obama administration pushed to approve a background check account failed.
“Failure to get legislation passed was one of Obama’s biggest regrets,” said Kris Brown, president of Brady: United Against Gun Violence, a nonprofit group.
Biden faces a political stalemate on the issue, despite longstanding public support for stricter gun laws, growing calls for action by many Democrats and the diminishing influence of the National Rifle Association.
According to a survey by the Pew Research Center in 2019, increasing proportions of Americans in both parties supported stricter gun laws. There was widespread bipartisan support also at some specific stages, including preventing people with mental illness from buying weapons. About 71 percent of Americans – including a slight majority of Republicans – are in favor of banning high-capacity ammunition carriers, while 69 percent, including half of Republicans, support a ban on assault weapons.
Biden said on Tuesday that it was wrong “to wait another minute, let alone an hour, to take common sense measures that will save lives in the future.”
But the challenge for his government will be to find out how much political capital he is willing to spend on a politically intractable issue, given the other monumental crises he is facing at the same time.
“This tragedy happened last night, so I wouldn’t expect a new proposal to be presented in less than 24 hours,” Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, told reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Ohio, where the president promoted his $ 1.9 trillion pandemic relief package. Although the government issued more than 30 executive orders in the first few weeks, none of them addressed armed violence.
For now, Susan Rice, the director of the Domestic Policy Council, and Cedric Richmond, the director of the public engagement office, have oversaw the government’s planned executive actions on arms, as well as plans to provide more resources for the prevention of armed violence. .
An executive action under consideration is the classification of “ghost weapons”, which are kits that allow a buyer to assemble a long weapon or revolver in full working order, such as firearms. This classification would require that they be serialized and subject to background checks.
Armed violence prevention groups are also pressing the government to define what it means to be “in the business” of selling weapons. According to current law, people who are “in the business” of selling weapons must do a background check, but it does not define what that means.
The government is also working to fulfill Biden’s campaign pledge to make a $ 900 million investment over eight years in programs to combat community violence, officials said.
Limited prospects for passing even modest gun legislation this year were on display on Tuesday at Capitol Hill.
Senator Joe Manchin III, a Democrat from West Virginia, has a long-standing bipartisan proposal – written with Sen. Patrick J. Toomey, Pennsylvania Republican – to close legal loopholes that allow people who buy firearms at gun fairs or on the internet avoid background checks.
But the bill failed to gather the 60 votes needed to pass the Senate. And Manchin – who as a moderate of a deeply conservative state is often in a position to decide whether Democrats can carry out their agenda in the equally divided chamber – also opposes the dismantling of the legislative obstruction that requires most legislation to obtain 60 votes.
Manchin said he was interested in reviving the Manchin-Toomey legislation, but opposed the universal background check bill passed by the House, citing his provision requiring checks for sales between private citizens. Separately, Toomey told reporters that he believed that further changes would be needed to his legislation with Manchin.
“I want to find something that can get through,” Toomey told reporters. “It would probably require something a little different. We have to see if we can find out how to thread the needle. “
Glenn Thrush contributed reports.