- Biden's address comes as America confronts yet another mass shooting, this time in Oklahoma.
- Senators are engaged in bipartisan talks about some limited legislation.
- But Washington has failed to act after repeated mass shootings, including after Sandy Hook.
President Joe Biden on Thursday evening urged federal action to curb gun violence while outlining a list of policies he supports, a plea that comes as the nation confronts a series of mass shootings.
"After Columbine, after Sandy Hook, after Charleston, after Las Vegas, after Parkland, nothing has been done," Biden said during a rare prime-time address. "This time that can't be true. This time we must actually do something."
Biden drilled into the specifics on policies that he would support. He listed several ideas he said should become law, including expanded background checks, requiring gun owners to safely store their firearms, a federal "red flag" law, and repealing the liability protections for gun manufacturers.
The president also repeatedly went back to the theme that lawmakers cannot fail to act. "How much more carnage are we willing to accept?" Biden asked at one point.
"This is about protecting children, this about protecting families, this is about protecting whole communities," Biden said. "It's about protecting our freedom to go to school to go to a grocery store or church without being shot and killed."
Biden also renewed his call for a federal assault weapons ban that would include a limit on high-capacity magazines. He conceded that a renewed ban might fail, so he also re-upped his push for raising the age that anyone can legally purchase an AR-15 or similar style gun.
The US has seen a devastating spurt of mass shootings in recent weeks. Ten Black people were targeted during a racist massacre at Buffalo supermarket on May 14. Just days later, 19 elementary school students and two teachers were gunned down in Uvalde, Texas. And then on Wednesday evening, at least four people were killed when a gunman opened fire on a Tulsa, Oklahoma, medical center.
Democrats responded to the Buffalo and Uvalde shootings by pushing for federal action. Top Democrats have expressed cautious optimism about bipartisan talks while conceding that previous tragedies have failed to spur Congress to act.
Until Thursday night, Biden had largely left it to lawmakers to figure out a path forward. Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, who has made passing gun legislation one of the focuses of his career, has led his party's talks with Republican senators such as John Cornyn of Texas and Susan Collins of Maine.
Biden said he supports those talks, but he made clear his frustrations with the modern Republican Party's near-complete opposition to even some limited gun control action at the federal level.
"My God the fact that a majority of the Senate Republicans don't want a majority of these proposals even to be debated or come up for a vote, I find unconscionable," he said.
Biden himself has experienced this frustration firsthand. While he was vice president, President Barack Obama made him the point person on the federal response to the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting. But a bill to expand background checks failed on the Senate floor months later, a stinging defeat that Obama called a "pretty shameful day" after the vote. Their struggles were only exacerbated by the fact that four Democrats opposed the legislation.
During the 2020 primary season, Biden repeatedly bragged about beating the National Rifle Association, a reference to his role in passing a sweeping 1994 crime bill that included a federal assault weapons ban. The ban expired during George W. Bush's administration and there is little chance that Congress could pass it again.
Biden outlined that lawmakers are mostly focused on more limited measures like red flag laws, which generally allow for authorities to temporarily confiscate a person's firearms if they pose an immediate threat to themselves or others. Some Republicans Insider previously spoke to at the Capitol expressed openness to such legislation, but they stressed that it should be mainly left to individual states to act. Conservatives and gun rights groups have previously opposed some state red flag laws over concerns that there were not enough due process protections for gun owners.
Any new law would effectively need 60 votes in the Senate to pass due to the chamber's filibuster. This means that Democrats must find at least 10 Republicans to back any measure.