President Joe Biden has urged Congress to ban assault weapons after the latest mass shootings in America as Democrats position gun control as a central platform of the 2022 midterm elections.
Speaking from the Cross Hall of the White House, the president repeated claims that the Second Amendment was “not absolute” while urging lawmakers to strengthen gun control laws, and if that fails, for the people to turn their “outrage into making this issue central to your vote.”
Biden laid out what he called “rational, commonsense measures” for Congress to consider. However, he noted that Democrats would need at least 10 Republicans on board in the Senate.
The president’s remarks come after a number of mass shootings in Texas, Oklahoma, and New York.
In the last few weeks, gunmen have killed 21 people at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, four people at a hospital in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and 10 people at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York.
Biden said his pitch was not about “taking away anyone’s guns” while restating his position that “the Second Amendment, like all other rights, is not absolute.”
“This isn’t about taking away anyone’s rights. It’s about protecting children. It’s about protecting families. It’s about protecting whole communities. It’s about protecting our freedoms to go to school, to a grocery store, to a church without being shot and killed,” he said.
The president and Democrats are positioning gun control as a platform to take to the 2022 midterm elections, with the top Senate Democrat saying the party will not pursue a doomed test vote on gun control measures.
Biden said that “if Congress fails ... I believe a majority of you will act to turn your outrage into making this issue central to your vote.”
Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has similarly called on Americans who want more gun control to vote for Democrats in November.
House Republicans have called current gun control legislation making its way through Congress as being “ill-advised and ineffective” and hampering “the ability of law-abiding Americans to defend themselves. Un-American. Political. Waste of time.”
The bill is not expected to pass the Senate.
“If you back red flag laws in some reflexive response to some emotion that you have, you betray your voters, you are a traitor to the Constitution, you do nothing to make mass shootings less likely, and you put a target on the back of your constituents,” he said.
“What the Democrats want is to ensure that the government has the power to take your guns away without giving you due process,” he went on to say.