During a press event in Nantucket, Massachusetts, on Thanksgiving, President Biden told reporters that he would push Congress to enact “stricter gun laws” before Republicans take control of the House of Representatives at the start of the new year, the New York Post reported.
The president railed against “assault weapons” and called the sale of semiautomatic weapons “just sick.”
The commander in chief told reporters outside the Nantucket Fire Department, “The idea we still allow semiautomatic weapons to be purchased is sick. It’s just sick. It has no, no social redeeming value. Zero. None. Not a single, solitary rationale for it except profit for the gun manufacturers.”
When asked by a reporter if it would be possible for Congress to pass the new laws during the lame-duck session, Biden stated, “I’m going to try. I’m going to try to get rid of assault weapons.”
Biden added that he is “sick and tired” of mass shootings and called for a renewed push for “much stricter gun laws.”
The president argued that red flag laws could “save lives” but are not being adequately enforced in states across the country. He added that his late son, Beau Biden, enforced the red flag laws in Delaware when he served as attorney general and that the policy was successful.
“The idea that we’re not enforcing red-flag laws, period, just based on knowledge, not on parents saying or a loved one saying you should arrest this person now for his own sake, is ridiculous,” said Biden.
The commander in chief’s latest call for restrictions follows three mass shooting events this month that killed 14 and injured 20 in total.
Following the tragic Colorado Springs LGBTQ nightclub shooting last weekend, during which a non-binary individual killed five and injured 18, Biden released a statement that read, “We need to enact an assault weapons ban to get weapons of war off America’s streets.”
Even though Democrats hold the House majority until January, an evenly split Senate makes it unlikely that Biden’s sweeping gun control laws would pass. It would require at least 10 Republican supporters to meet the 60-vote requirement to bypass a filibuster.
“I’m going to do it whenever I — I got to make that assessment as I get in and start counting the votes,” Biden said Thursday.