Biden delivers speech on gun violence

President Biden on Thursday urged Congress to make a number of moves to reduce gun violence during his speech to the American people in the wake of several mass shootings in the country. 

Here are his main proposals: 

Ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines

The President called for a ban on “assault weapons” and high-capacity magazines, and short of that, he said the age to purchase them should be raised from 18 to 21. 

“We should reinstate the assault weapons ban high-capacity magazines that we passed in 1994 with bipartisan support in Congress and the support of law enforcement,” Biden said. “Nine categories of semi-automatic weapons were included in that ban, like AK-47 and AR-15. And in the 10 years it was law, mass shootings went down. But after Republicans let the law expire in 2004 those weapons were allowed to be sold again. Mass shootings tripled. Those are the facts.” 

He said Congress should also “limit how many rounds a weapon can hold.” 

“Why in God’s name should an ordinary citizen be able to purchase an assault weapon that holds 30 round magazines that lets mass shooters fire hundreds of bullets in matter of minutes?,” he asked. “The damage was so devastating in Uvalde. Parents had to do DNA swabs to identify the remains of their children, nine- and 10-year-olds.”

And if Congress can’t ban assault weapons, it should raise the age to purchase them from 18 to 21

“Look I know some folks will say 18-year-olds can serve in the military and fire those weapons,” Biden said. “But that’s with training and supervision by the best trained experts in the world. Don’t tell me raising the age won’t make a difference. Enough.”  

Strengthen background checks, enact safe storage laws and red flag laws

Biden further pushed Congress to strengthen background checks and act safe storage law and red flag laws, which he said would, “keep guns out of the hands of felons” and “fugitives.” 

“Stronger background checks are something that the vast majority of Americans, including the majority of gun owners agree on,” he said. “I also believe we should have safe storage laws and personal liability for not locking up your gun.” 

Repeal the immunity that protects gun manufacturers from liability

“We should repeal the liability shield that often protects gun manufacturers and being sued for the death and destruction caused by their weapons,” he said. “The only industry in this country that has that kind of immunity. Imagine if the tobacco industry had been immune from being sued where we be today. The gun industry’s special protections are outrageous. It must end.” 

Address the mental health crisis

Biden said there was a “serious mental health crisis in this country,” something Republicans have turned to instead of backing new gun restrictions. 

“We have to do something about it,” he said. “That’s why mental health is at the heart of my unity agenda that I laid out in the State of Union address this year. We must provide more school counselors or school nurses, more mental health services for students and for teachers. More people volunteering as mentors to help young people succeed. More privacy protection and resources to keep kids safe from the harms of social media. This unity agenda won’t fully heal the wounded souls, but it will help, it matters.” 

President Biden ended his remarks on Thursday with a final plea for action, saying change needs to happen “for the children we’ve lost, the children we can save.”

He called on lawmakers and voters to “hear the call and the cry” and “meet the moment.”

It comes after a mass shooting at an elementary school in Texas left 19 students and two teachers dead.

“Let’s hear the call and the cry. Let’s meet the moment. Let us finally do something. God bless the families who are hurting. God bless you all,” he added.

The President ended his speech with a prayer from a hymn he said is sung in his church based on Psalm 91: “‘May he raise you up on eagle’s wings and bear you on the breath of dawn, make you to shine like the sun and hold you in the palm of his hand.’ That’s my prayer for all of you. God bless you.” 

President Biden called on Congress to take further steps to enhance background checks for gun purchases and expand red flag laws in remarks from the White House Thursday.

He said such steps would’ve prevented mass shootings in Parkland, Florida, Fort Hood, Texas, and Uvalde, Texas.

Biden said federal red flag laws would allow adults to alert authorities if “a child, a student, a patient is exhibiting violent tendencies, threatening classmates, or experiencing suicidal thoughts that makes them a danger to themselves or to others,” touting similar provisions in 19 states and the District of Columbia, including one in Delaware named for his son — former Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden.

And background checks, he said, offer a solution “that the vast majority of Americans, including the majority of gun owners agree on.” 

A House-passed bill, HR 1446, backed by Democratic Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, would close what’s known as the “Charleston loophole,” which allows some licensed gun sales to go through before a required background check is done. 

Senate Democrats took steps Tuesday night to place the bill — called the Enhanced Background Checks Act of 2021 — onto the legislative calendar so it can be voted on, but it’s unclear when the Senate will vote on the measure.

At this time, the legislation does not have the 60 votes required to clear a legislative filibuster in the Senate.

President Biden bemoaned Republican opposition to new gun control measures in a speech from the White House, calling the resistance in the face of mass shootings “unconscionable.”

“It’s time for the Senate to do something,” he said. “But as we know, in order to get anything done in the Senate, we need a minimum of 10 Republican senators.”

“I support the bipartisan efforts that includes small group of Democrats and Republican senators trying to find a way,” Biden said, putting his backing behind efforts led by Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn and Connecticut Democrat Chris Murphy.

Still, he used the moment to call out GOP lawmakers who have resisted attempts in the past to pass gun control laws on background checks and other areas.

“My God, the fact that the majority of the Senate Republicans don’t want any of these proposals, even to be debated or come up for a vote, I find unconscionable,” Biden said.

Concluding his address, Biden said if Congress failed to act he believed American voters would punish them at the ballot box.

“I know how hard it is, but I’ll never give up. And if Congress fails, I believe this time a majority of American people won’t give up either. I believe the majority of you will act to turn your outrage into making this issue central to your vote. Enough, enough, enough,” he said.

After a nearly 10-hour long session during what was originally scheduled as a recess week, the House Judiciary Committee has voted 25-19 down party lines to approve a package of gun control legislation that comes in the wake of multiple mass shootings in the country. 

The vote unfolded as President Biden delivered remarks on gun violence and urged Congress to act.

The package — called the “Protect Our Kids Act” — encompasses a wide range of Democratic priorities that includes raising the legal age to buy certain semiautomatic centerfire rifles from 18 to 21 years old, establishing new federal offenses for gun trafficking and for selling large-capacity magazines, and allowing local governments to compensate individuals who surrender such magazines through a buyback program. 

It would create a tax incentive for retail sales of safe storage devices and criminal penalties for breaking new requirements regulating firearm storage on residential premises, and take steps to strengthen existing federal regulations on bump stocks and ghost guns.

In a letter to House colleagues, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the bill will come to the floor for a vote next week. But the bill is not expected to get the 60 votes required in the Senate to overcome a filibuster. 

Read more about the package here.

President Biden called Thursday for the repeal of a liability shield protecting gun manufacturers from prosecution following mass shootings, blasting the protections as “outrageous.”

“We should repeal the liability shield that often protects gun manufacturers and being sued for the death and destruction caused by their weapons,” Biden said in a prime-time address from the White House. “It’s the only industry in this country that has that kind of immunity – imagine if the tobacco industry had been immune from being sued, where we’d be today.” 

Under the 2005 Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, gun manufacturers cannot be held liable for the use of their products in crimes. 

However, gun manufacturers can still be held liable for (and thus sued for) a range of things, including negligence, breach of contract regarding the purchase of a gun or certain damages from defects in the design of a gun. 

President Biden said the age to purchase assault weapons must be raised from 18 to 21 if lawmakers cannot agree on an outright ban on those firearms.

“We must at least raise the age to be able to purchase one to 21,” Biden said at the White House.

He said he was cognizant of criticism that some 18-21-year-olds serve in the military and handle those weapons as part of their service.

He said those individuals receive “training and supervision by the best trained experts in the world.” 

President Biden issued a call to reinstate a ban on assault weapons that he said helped prevent horrific murders but expired in 2004.

Biden said in the 10 years the law was in place, mass shootings decreased.

“After Republicans let the law expire in 2004, those weapons were allowed to be sold again. Mass shootings tripled,” Biden said

He said the weapons inflicted gruesome damage on their victims and particularly children.

“The damage is so devastating and in Uvalde, parents had to do DNA swabs to identify the remains of their children, nine and 10-year-old children,” he said.

The President noted that the rights granted by the Second Amendment are “not unlimited.”

President Biden urged action in the wake of three mass shootings in the US, saying “this isn’t about taking away anyone’s guns.”

“In fact, we believe we should be treating responsible gun owners as an example of how every gun owner should behave,” Biden added during remarks on Thursday.

The President said he respects “the culture and the tradition” of gun ownership, but that the Second Amendment “like all other rights is not absolute.” 

For example, he said, “machine guns have been federally regulated for nearly 90 years. This is still a free country.” 

“This isn’t about taking anyone’s rights. It’s about protecting children. It’s about protecting families. It’s about protecting whole communities. It’s about protecting our freedom to go to school, to a grocery store to a church without being shot and killed,” he said. 

After other mass shootings in the US, like the ones in Columbine, Sandy Hook and Parkland, Biden said nothing changed.

The President said when he visited the sites of two of the most recent shootings in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas, the message from families was clear.

He said they told him, “Do something. Just do something. For God’s sake, do something.”

“Standing there in that small town, like so many other communities across America, I couldn’t help but think, there are too many other schools, too many other everyday places, that have become killing fields, battlefields, here in America,” Biden said, recalling his visit to Robb Elementary School in Texas, where 19 students and two teachers were killed on May 24.

President Biden said a recent spate of horrific mass shootings must impel the nation to take action to prevent further massacres by passing gun control restrictions.

After meeting families mourning their slain loved ones in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas, Biden said the message from them was clear: “Do something.”

Biden was standing in the White House cross hall, where 56 candles were burning behind him to represent victims of gun control in all US states and territories.

President Biden is delivering a speech from the White House on guns to press US lawmakers to take action as the country confronts another mass shooting.

Biden addressed the recent mass shootings and gun violence while flanked by a candle-lit path.

Earlier Thursday, the White House said that Biden plans to discuss “the recent tragic mass shootings, and the need for Congress to act to pass commonsense laws to combat the epidemic of gun violence that is taking lives every day.”

Biden had been privately considering an address on the recent mass shootings even before four people were killed in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Wednesday night, aides say. 

The speech comes after two other recent mass shootings: one at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, on May 14 and one at an elementary school in Uvale, Texas, on May 24.

Biden did give a speech after the Texas shooting, but since then, the President has only selectively waded into the debate over gun control, stopping short of endorsing any specific pieces of legislation.

Both Biden and his advisers have suggested they have exhausted their options on executive action to address guns, though continue to explore avenues for unilateral action.

President Biden is expected to use his speech tonight to urge lawmakers to take action in response to a string of mass shootings in the US.

The President has acknowledged there is little he can do without the support of congressional Republicans to stop the mass shootings.

Here’s where things stand on Capitol Hill:

House: The House Judiciary Committee was holding a markup on Thursday of a wide-ranging package of gun control legislation called the “Protecting Our Kids Act,” as lawmakers face intense pressure to act in the wake of recent mass shootings.

House Democrats are moving to tee up votes on gun bills in the aftermath of a series of horrific shootings that have shocked the nation, including at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, and a supermarket in a predominantly Black neighborhood in Buffalo, New York.

Many of these measures are unlikely to pass the Senate, however, amid widespread GOP opposition to stricter gun control. A bipartisan group of senators is engaging in talks in an attempt to find common ground on gun policy, but it is still unclear what, if anything, will come of the effort.

The “Protecting Out Kids Act,” put forward by Democrats, includes a series of individual bills aimed at preventing gun violence. The measure would raise the legal age to buy certain semiautomatic centerfire rifles from 18 to 21 years old, establish new federal offenses for gun trafficking and for selling large-capacity magazines, and allow local governments to compensate individuals who surrender such magazines through a buyback program.

It would create a tax incentive for retail sales of safe storage devices and criminal penalties for breaking new requirements regulating firearm storage on residential premises. The measure would also take steps to strengthen existing federal regulations on bump stocks and ghost guns.

Senate: A bipartisan group of senators are in talks to see if there is common ground across party lines on new laws, though it is far from clear that the bipartisan effort will amount to anything given the highly polarized political environment.

The Senate’s discussions revolve around less restrictive gun measures than the House Judiciary committee’s bill, including strengthening background checks, and incentivizing mental health initiatives and compliance with “red flag” laws.

Sen. Chris Murphy, the Connecticut Democrat helping lead the talks, acknowledged that any accord would have to be “incremental” in order to win at least 10 Republican votes to break a filibuster in the 50-50 Senate — even as he expressed optimism that a deal could be reached by next week.

Mitch McConnell, the Senate GOP leader, said in his home state of Kentucky on Thursday that he wants a bipartisan deal “to target” the problem, which is “school safety and mental illness” and that it must be “consistent with the Second Amendment” — a different view from that of many Democrats, who see lax gun laws as the main culprit.

Read more about gun control efforts in Congress here.

Police officers walk near people embracing at the reunion location, Memorial High School, after a shooting at the Saint Francis Hospital campus, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, June 1.

There have so far been at least 233 mass shootings in 2022, according to the non-profit organization Gun Violence Archive — including the shooting in Tulsa.

June 1 was the 152nd day of the year. This means there have been more mass shootings this year than there have been days in 2022.

CNN and the GVA define a mass shooting as a shooting that injured or killed four or more people, not including the shooter.

President Biden is set to deliver remarks soon from the White House on guns and is expected to press US lawmakers to take action.

Oklahoma has an anti-red flag law bill — which was the nation’s first and appears to be the only one in the US — that prevents any level of government in the state from enacting red flag laws or accepting funding to implement such laws. 

It is unclear at this time whether the red flag law could have prevented a gunman who killed four in a Tulsa medical office from accessing a weapon. 

When the law was signed in May 2020, the state heralded it as the first in the nation. Kansas, Georgia, and Virginia have seen anti-red flag bills introduced in recent years, but so far none have become law. 

Oklahoma’s Senate Bill 1081, or the Anti-Red Flag Act, prevents state agencies and local governments from accepting funding in order to implement, or enacting on their own, “extreme risk protection orders,” meaning any measure meant to reduce the risk of gun injury or death by keeping a person from owning a gun or removing a gun from someone. 

Some background: Red flag laws exist in multiple states and allow the temporary removal of firearms from people who could pose a danger to themselves or others. In Florida, the state’s red flag law has been leveraged in more than 8,000 instances since 2018.

According to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation’s database on background checks, more than 860,000 people have been blocked from buying a gun in New York due to red flag laws, the third-highest number in the country. 

President Biden has been briefed three times in the last three weeks on mass shootings in the US: one occurred at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, one at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, and one at a hospital complex in Tulsa, Oklahoma, just yesterday.

There have so far been at least 233 mass shootings in 2022, according to the nonprofit organization Gun Violence Archive — including the shooting in Tulsa.

In the face of these shootings, the President is expected to give a speech from the White House on guns tonight.

Here are key things to know about each incident:

Amanda Glenn has been identified as one of the victims of Wednesday’s shooting at Tulsa’s Saint Francis Hospital campus, the city’s Police Chief Wendell Franklin said during a news conference Thursday morning. 

Glenn was a receptionist at St. Francis Hospital’s Warren Clinic, Franklin confirmed.

Her friend of five years, Amy Pennington, told CNN that Glenn was a mother of two boys who always had her sons in mind whenever she did anything. 

She described Glenn as one of the “proudest mothers” she has ever met and said she shared a strong bond with her sons, who she said were proud “mamas boys.” 

Glenn is also survived by her husband. 

“She was a hard worker, kind soul, and would do anything for you,“ Pennington added. 

Senate Democrats are ready to drop some of their most pressing demands to restrict access to guns amid the nationwide onslaught of deadly massacres — but even that may not be enough to reach a deal with Republicans. 

Murphy, who is part of a bipartisan group of senators working behind the scenes to respond to deadly gun-related massacres nationwide, acknowledged in an interview that any accord would have to be “incremental” in order to win at least 10 Republicans to break a filibuster in the 50-50 Senate – even as he expressed optimism that a deal could be reached by next week. 

“I’ve also heard Republicans make clear that as long as we’re not talking about doing everything at once, as long as we’re talking about more incremental but significant changes, they’re open,” said Murphy, who has been briefing President Biden on the state of the talks. 

Indeed, as House Democrats plan to move forward with a bill to ban so-called assault weapons, Senate Democrats are not even discussing a ban on firearms such as AR-15s, the high-powered rifle used in the Texas elementary school massacre and a spate of mass shootings. They are also conceding that a bipartisan bill to expand background checks on commercial firearm sales will have to be narrowed, even as the House passed a bill last year to mandate universal background checks on all commercial sales and private transfers as well. 

And sources in both parties told CNN that a push to raise the age to 21 for purchasing semi-automatic rifles has yet to gain much traction in Senate talks, as Republican opposition to the idea begins to mount and Democrats are uncertain whether such an idea can win the necessary 60 votes to break a filibuster. 

“That’s hard to see,” one GOP source said of raising the age to 21 for purchasing the weapons. 

“Not gonna happen,” Texas Sen. John Cornyn, a chief GOP negotiator, tweeted about imposing new restrictions on guns, though his office declined to specify what he meant. 

Asked last week about raising the age to 21 for buying the powerful guns, North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis – a Republican involved in the bipartisan talks – was skeptical.

“When I think of that, I think, do we take a look at the age you can enlist in the military?” Tillis said. “So there are a lot of complexities to that question.”

Indeed, even after the Democratic concessions on gun control, senators say, the prospects that bipartisan talks could collapse in the coming days are very real. 

Murphy and Blumenthal have been here before – ever since the 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school shooting in their home state of Connecticut. And even soon after the murder of 20 young children and six adults there, Democrats fell short of the 60 votes needed to advance a bill by Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Republican Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania to mandate background checks on firearm sales at gun shows and over the Internet.  

Numerous legislative efforts in the wake of many subsequent mass shootings have also floundered, including an effort by Murphy to revive the Manchin-Toomey bill last year by simply closing the so-called gun show loophole and leaving out background checks on Internet sales altogether. But despite Murphy’s talks with Sen. Lindsey Graham on the matter last year, the renewed push never materialized into a deal.  

“It’s too broad,” the South Carolina Republican told CNN when asked if he could get behind the Manchin-Toomey plan in the aftermath of last week’s Uvalde, Texas, massacre. 

Yet even so, senators are reengaging in talks in a way different than other mass shootings given the scale of the Uvalde massacre, with the murder of 19 children and two adults at Robb elementary school – at the hands of an 18-year-old with an AR-15. Senators say a deal must be reached by sometime next week, or nothing will get done – again. 

CNN’s Ted Barrett and Morgan Rimmer contributed reporting to this post.

President Biden will deliver a rare evening speech on guns today to press US lawmakers to take action as the US confronts another mass shooting.

Biden plans to discuss “the recent tragic mass shootings, and the need for Congress to act to pass commonsense laws to combat the epidemic of gun violence that is taking lives every day,” the White House said in announcing the speech.

The remarks will amount to Biden’s most fulsome speech about guns since a massacre at a Texas elementary school last week.

Since then, a string of additional mass shootings have unfolded in states across the country, including in Tulsa Wednesday. That shooting left five dead, including the gunman.

In the hours after the Texas massacre, Biden delivered an emotional seven-minute speech at the White House, calling the repeated gun killings of Americans “sick.”

“Why? Why are we willing to live with this carnage? Why do we keep letting this happen?” he asked.

Since then, however, Biden has only selectively waded into the debate over gun control, stopping short of endorsing any specific legislative action to prevent further carnage.

On Wednesday, the President expressed scant optimism Congress would agree on new gun control legislation, even as a bipartisan group of senators meets to weigh options.

“I served in Congress for 36 years. I’m never confident, totally,” Biden said when asked whether he believed lawmakers would agree on new gun laws.

“It depends. So I don’t know,” Biden said. “I’ve not been in the negotiations as they’re going on right now.”

The lukewarm response was an indication Biden is wary of associating too closely with the nascent efforts on Capitol Hill to arrive at a gun control compromise.

While Biden said Tuesday he would speak with lawmakers about guns, the White House later said he would only become involved when the time is right.

Both Biden and his advisers have suggested they have exhausted their options on executive action to address guns, though continue to explore avenues for unilateral action.

Speaking a day after consoling families in Texas, Biden expressed limited hope that certain Republicans, like Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell and one of his top allies, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, could be convinced to support some type of new gun laws.

“I don’t know, I think there’s a realization on the part of rational Republicans, and I consider McConnell a rational Republican, Cornyn as well. There’s a recognition on their part they can’t continue like this,” he said.

Keep reading here.

The House Judiciary Committee is holding a markup on Thursday of a wide-ranging package of gun control legislation called the “Protecting Our Kids Act,” as lawmakers face intense pressure to act in the wake of recent mass shootings.

House Democrats are moving to tee up votes on gun bills in the aftermath of a series of horrific shootings that have shocked the nation, including at a Tulsa hospital complex, an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, and a supermarket in a predominantly Black neighborhood in Buffalo, New York.

Many of these measures are unlikely to pass the Senate, however, amid widespread GOP opposition to stricter gun control. A bipartisan group of senators is engaging in talks in an attempt to find common ground on gun policy, but it is still unclear what, if anything, will come of the effort.

The “Protecting Out Kids Act,” put forward by Democrats, includes a series of individual bills aimed at preventing gun violence. The measure would raise the legal age to buy certain semiautomatic centerfire rifles from 18 to 21 years old, establish new federal offenses for gun trafficking and for selling large-capacity magazines, and allow local governments to compensate individuals who surrender such magazines through a buyback program. It would create a tax incentive for retail sales of safe storage devices and criminal penalties for breaking new requirements regulating firearm storage on residential premises. The measure would also take steps to strengthen existing federal regulations on bump stocks and ghost guns.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, a New York Democrat, on Thursday called for the passage of the measures to prevent gun violence, emphasizing a sense of urgency after what happened in Uvalde and Buffalo as well as other incidents.

Nadler said that he’s hopeful that this time may be different, but “can’t speak for the Senate.”

Most legislation requires 60 votes to overcome a filibuster and pass in the Senate and Democrats only control 50 seats. At least 10 Republicans would need to vote with Democrats to pass new gun laws as a result, an unlikely prospect.

Read the full story here:

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) speaks during a hearing on oversight of the Justice Department and a probe into the politicization of the department under Attorney General William Barr on Capitol Hill, June 24, 2020 in Washington, DC.

Related article House Judiciary takes up wide-ranging gun control legislation

Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a conference on Wednesday, June 1, in Washington, DC. 

Vice President Kamala Harris said the White House has been “monitoring the situation quite closely” in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Thursday, after a gunman opened fire in a hospital.

“The latest report, of course, is that four innocent people lost their lives, and many more were injured,” Harris said, speaking at an event at the Department of Education. “We of course, all of us, hold the people of Tulsa in our hearts, but we also reaffirm our commitment to passing common sense gun safety laws.”

Harris said that while Biden has “taken more executive action to combat gun violence than any other President at this point in their administration,” the administration can’t do it on its own and needs the support of lawmakers.