President Biden said Monday that it’s up to Congress to outlaw assault weapons and strengthen background checks for gun sales, telling reporters: “I can’t dictate this stuff.”
“I can do the things I’ve done and any executive action I can take, I’ll continue to take. But I can’t outlaw a weapon. I can’t change a background check. I can’t do that,” Biden said after stepping off Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House.
Asked if he is optimistic for getting a deal to address gun violence after Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said last week that he had tapped Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) to negotiate with Democrats, Biden replied: “I don’t know.”
“McConnell is a rational Republican. Cornyn is as well,” he said.
Biden and McConnell successfully negotiated several deals when Biden was vice president, most notably a deal to keep many of the George W. Bush-era tax cuts in place and avoid the so-called fiscal cliff at the start of 2013.
But the president has made clear in recent days that Senate Democrats led by Sen. Chris Murphy (Conn.) will handle the negotiations on Capitol Hill over gun control.
Asked on Monday about the prospect of passing legislation to encourage states to set up red flag laws to prohibit people who are deemed dangers to themselves or others from possessing guns, Biden replied: “That’s hard to say because I have not been negotiating with any of the Republicans.”
The president, however, reiterated his opposition to 100-round magazines, rarely used devices that are legal in some states.
“There’s only one reason for something that can fire 100 shots,” he said, and talked about hearings he held as a senator on “rational gun laws,” according to a White House pool report.
He also recalled a past visit to a trauma hospital in New York where doctors showed him gunshot injuries.
“They showed me an x-ray,” he said. “A 9 mm bullet blows the lung out of the body.”
“There’s simply no rational basis for it in terms of self-protection, hunting,” he said, according to the pool report.
“The Constitution, the Second Amendment was never absolute. You couldn’t buy a cannon when the Second Amendment was passed,” he said, repeating something he said a day after 21 people were killed in Uvalde, Texas, at an elementary school.
“I think things have gotten so bad that everybody is getting more rational about it,” he said, echoing remarks by other Democrats such as Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who expressed their views in recent days that Republicans seem more willing to negotiate on gun control since 19 children and two teachers died in Uvalde.
Biden pledged to take action to curb gun violence during a visit to Robb Elementary School and a local church in Uvalde, where a crowd of demonstrators chanted “Do something.”
“We will,” Biden replied, giving the crowd a thumbs up.
Asked Monday if he now feels more motivated to act on gun-control proposals, Biden said: “I’ve been pretty motivated all along.”
“The folks who were victimized, their families, they spent three hours and 40 minutes with me. They waited all that time. Some came two hours early. The pain is palpable. I think a lot of it is unnecessary. I’m going to continue to push,” he said of his trip to Texas to meet the victims’ families.
George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism