Assault gun ban legislation faces long odds because of Republican opposition, but Joe Biden stated on Thursday that he will still try to enact it during the lame-duck session before the next Congress is elected. Following a week in which three mass shootings occurred in the United States, Biden addressed the media on Thanksgiving morning.
Red flag regulations, which allow law enforcement to seize firearms from those believed to pose a threat to themselves or others, are not being applied nationwide, according to Biden, who called it “stupid.”
“No. 2, the notion that we still permit the purchase of semi-automatic guns is sick. It’s simply sick. No, it has no redeeming qualities for society. Zero. None. There is no other justification for it besides the profit of the gun makers, he declared.
During the lame-duck session, Biden declared he was “going to try to get rid of assault rifles,” but it would depend on whether he had the support to pass a bill.
He declared, “I’m going to do it whenever I — I got to make that assessment once I come in and start counting the ballots.”
Earlier this year, the House passed a bill to outlaw assault rifles, but it was dead because Democrats had a tiny majority in the Senate and most Republicans had come together to oppose such legislation, making it difficult to overcome a filibuster.
When the new Congress convenes in January and Republicans take control of the House, the task of passing any gun control legislation will become considerably more challenging.
Another gloomy week for gun violence in America has just passed.
Six people were killed and at least six others were injured when a handgunman opened fire inside a break room at a Walmart in Chesapeake, Virginia, on Tuesday night.
Three days earlier, a shooter in Colorado Springs, Colorado, opened fire inside an LGBTQ nightclub, leaving five people dead and at least 25 more injured.
A student at the University of Virginia also shot and murdered three other students after they returned from a class field trip less than a week before the shooting in Colorado.
Only a few months have passed since a massacre at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, which claimed the lives of 19 children and two instructors.
After Uvalde, Congress passed a bipartisan package on gun control that, among other things, increased background checks for people between the ages of 18 and 21.
Although it was the most important gun control law in almost three decades, it fell short of the more extensive restrictions that many Democrats and activists had demanded.
After the Uvalde shooting, Biden, who was a senator when Congress temporarily outlawed assault weapons in 1994, urged for a similar measure.
