Biden Calls for Ban on Assault Weapons and New ‘Red Flag’ Laws
The president said the measures were “not about taking away anyone’s guns.” He also acknowledged that Congress might not come to a consensus, even as the nation grieves the victims of several mass shootings.
“The fact that the majority of the Senate Republicans don’t want any of these proposals, even to be debated or come up for a vote, I find unconscionable,” President Biden said on Thursday. “We can’t fail the American people again.”Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
WASHINGTON — President Biden demanded on Thursday that lawmakers respond to communities turned into “killing fields” by passing far-reaching limits on guns, calling on Congress to ban assault-style weapons, expand background checks and pass “red flag” laws after massacres in Texas and New York.
In a rare evening address to the nation, Mr. Biden dared Republicans to ignore the repeated convulsions of anger and grief from gun violence by continuing to block gun measures supported by large majorities in both parties, and even among gun owners.
“My God,” he declared from the Cross Hall, a ceremonial part of the White House residence, which was lined with candles in honor of victims of gun violence. “The fact that the majority of the Senate Republicans don’t want any of these proposals, even to be debated or come up for a vote, I find unconscionable. We can’t fail the American people again.”
Mr. Biden’s speech came a day after a mass shooting in Tulsa, Okla., that killed four victims and nine days after a massacre in Uvalde, Texas, that took the lives of 19 elementary school children and two teachers. Ten days before that, 10 Black people were gunned down in a grocery store in Buffalo. The list, Mr. Biden said, goes on.
“After Columbine, after Sandy Hook, after Charleston, after Orlando, after Las Vegas, after Parkland — nothing has been done,” he said, lamenting decades of inaction.
With the 17-minute address, Mr. Biden abruptly shed the reluctance of his White House to engage in what could become yet another fruitless partisan confrontation, played out amid funerals in Uvalde, Buffalo and Tulsa. After weeks of carefully calibrating his calls for action, the president on Thursday did not hold back.
“Enough, enough. It’s time for each of us to do our part,” he told Americans. “For the children we’ve lost. For the children we can save. For the nation we love.”
“Let’s hear the call and the cry,” he said, almost pleading with his fellow politicians in Washington. “Let’s meet the moment. Let us finally do something.”
Whether that will happen remains unclear. Despite his forceful tone, Mr. Biden all but acknowledged in his speech the political realities that could make him just another in a long line of presidents to have demanded action on guns, only to fail. He called the fight “hard,” and moments after urging a ban on assault weapons, he offered alternatives if that proved to be impossible.