Biden said it’s ‘about time’ for lawmakers to move on his assault weapons ban

President Joe Biden on Tuesday reiterated his call for Congress to pass a ban on assault weapons — even as he acknowledged the limitations of his own authority to get anything done without the consent of lawmakers.

Biden raised the issue as he left the White House for North Carolina after addressing the Nashville school shooting at a pre-scheduled event Monday.

‘I have gone the full extent of my executive power on my own. I think it’s about time,” Biden told reporters at the White House.

Congress must act. The majority of the American people want a ban on assault weapons,” he continued. “I can do nothing but beg Congress to act.”

His pleas come as key legislators are already expressing doubts about its ability to pass legislation — even after a gunman at The Covenant School killed six people, latest in a series of mass shootings at schools, places of worship, shopping malls and other locations.

Support for reinstating the expired ban appears to be waning — even as the White House touts an increase in mass shootings since it ended in 2004.

Support was 47 percent compared to 51 percent who opposed it in a ABC News/Washington Post poll published last month. That was a steep drop from 2019, including a 9-point drop in support for a ban and a 10-point increase against it.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Tuesday reiterated her call for Republicans in Congress to get behind a bill to ban assault weapons — after senior lawmakers questioned whether there was enough support to enact significant new action following the shooting at the school in Nashville.

“We need gun safety laws, comprehensive gun safety laws. We need to ban assault rifles, those weapons of war have no place on our streets,” she told MSNBC on Tuesday. “They don’t belong in schools… This is unacceptable. You will continue to hear this from the president,” she said.

She spoke a day after saying “enough is enough” at the White House following the Nashville tragedy, and on the same day, authorities released chilling bodycam footage of the shooting that left six people dead.

Jean-Pierre spoke from the White House grounds after Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn, who helped push through the most comprehensive gun legislation in years during the last Congress, said there was little point in doing more lawmaking in the aftermath of more shootings.

“I would say we went as far as we could unless someone identifies an area that we haven’t addressed,” Cornyn said Monday. He was specifically asked about taking additional background check steps for gun buyers.

Jean-Pierre rejected that attitude in a separate interview on CNN. ‘We shouldn’t say there’s nothing else to do. We should try to find out what else there is to do,” she said.

California Senator Dianne Feinstein, who helped draft the original ban and who will retire in 2024, published an analysis of academic studies in 2019 with mass shootings, the number of deaths dropped when the ban was in place and jumped up when it expired.

Jean-Pierre spoke about her own family, saying she “hugged my 8-year-old a little tighter” after the news. ‘I was one of the lucky ones. Like many Americans, I was one of the lucky ones last night. You know why? My daughter came home from school. So this is what we live with as a country,” she said.

She echoed a message from Monday: “Enough, enough, enough.” We’ve had a president who has done something about this,” she said after being asked if President Biden was planning any new executive action.

“I know you asked me about executive action, what else can we do? This president has taken more executive action on gun violence safety than any president before him,” she said.

“We need Republicans in Congress who show courage. They owe this to these parents. They owe this to these relatives who lose their loved ones.”

Any legislative action would need to gain the support of the majority in the House and clear a 60-vote hurdle in the Senate, where Republicans and gun rights advocates can launch a filibuster, reenacting the Clinton-era assault weapons ban. becomes an extremely difficult task. lifting.

The shooting took place in GOP Rep.’s congressional district. Andy Ogles, advocating a focus on mental health rather than an effort to ban semi-automatic assault rifles like the AR-15.

Without a clear legislative path, Jean-Pierre repeatedly takes to the airwaves to demand the safety of schools. “We can no longer sit around and allow this to happen. You know, kids should be able to go to school and be safe. Teachers must be able to go to school and teach. Again, we don’t see this anywhere else in the world except here,” she said.

In an interview with CNN, she slammed the House Judiciary Committee for delaying a resolution that would overturn an alcohol, tobacco, firearms and explosives agency. rule under Biden that would establish criteria for stabilizing braces that could allow pistols to act like rifles in a manner used in the Las Vegas mass shooting.

“When you hear elected officials say it’s another talking point, when the president says we need to do more, that’s a terrible thing to hear too, because that’s what you say to those families who have lost loved ones, to those parents who lost three 9-year-olds. They lost their children yesterday, and we say so, don’t we?’

‘We shouldn’t say there’s nothing else to do. We should try to find out what else there is to do,’ Jean-Pierre said.