Biden’s Call For Assault Weapons Ban Grows Tired: Letter

ACROSS AMERICA — A coalition of nearly 120 gun reform groups from around the country is calling on President Joe Biden to use his upcoming State of the Union address to declare a national emergency over gun violence and tell the nation how he plans to curb gun deaths.

In a letter Tuesday, The Time Is Now coalition members called out Biden for his standard response to mass shootings, a call for renewal of the 1994 assault weapons that has almost no chance of passing a closely divided Congress.

Biden’s second State of the Union address on Feb. 7 will be his first appearance before the newly Republican-controlled House, where he is expected to have trouble advancing the assault weapons ban. It passed the House last year, but the process must start again after the Senate failed to take up the measure.

A political climate that guarantees legislative roadblocks, the groups told Biden in the letter, “demands a higher level of leadership from your White House.”

Among those signing the letter include Brady United, Community Justice Action Fund, Guns Down America, March for Our Lives and Newtown Action Alliance. Read #TheTimeIsNow Letter

Their call for comes as mass shootings occur at a record pace. There have been at least 52 mass shootings so far in 2023 that have killed at least 69 people and injured dozens of others, according to the Gun Violence Archive. Overall, nearly 3,600 people have lost their lives to gun violence, about 57 percent of whom died by suicide.

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“For a president who ran on one of the most comprehensive gun violence prevention strategies in probably American history, who has repeatedly said that he will do everything in his power to help solve this crisis, he’s simply left too many solutions on the table,” Igor Volsky, executive director of Guns Down America, one of the main co-signers, told Politico, the first to report on the letter.

“He has a real obligation to live up to his promises and live up to his word and do everything and anything he can to make progress,” Volsky said.

The Biden White House has accomplished more legislatively on gun policy than previous administrations. One prominent example:

In June, seizing on the momentum of back-to-back mass shootings at a Buffalo, New York, grocery store and Uvalde, Texas, elementary school, Congress passed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. The first significant curb on gun rights in nearly three decades, the legislation expanded background checks for young gun buyers and helped states implement red flag laws and other measures to keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers.

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A month later, the Senate confirmed Steve Dettelbach as the first permanent director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives since 2013. When nominated by Biden, the 56-year-old Dettelbach, a former federal prosecutor, pledged to tackle “an epidemic of firearms violence.”

Also Biden has taken nearly two dozen executive actions to reduce gun, and the Justice Department has invested $100 million in community violence intervention grants.

With a legislative path for the assault weapons ban unlikely, the groups called on Biden to focus on implementation of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, and making sure that funding goes to communities that have been most affected by gun violence and youth-focused violence prevention in schools. They also called for more training for FBI investigators on background checks required for firearms buyers under 21.

Also, the groups asked the Biden administration to address a loophole clarifying who is considered “engaged in the business” of selling firearms, and to use a new firearms trafficking statute to target the largest sources of crime guns.