President Biden vowed Thursday to push a ban on “assault weapons” before the next Congress forms — as he decried the sale of semiautomatic weapons as “sick.”
The 80-year-old president made the comments as the country reels from a spate of recent mass shootings.
“I’m sick and tired of these shootings. We should have much stricter gun laws,” Biden told reporters outside the Nantucket Fire Department in Massachusetts, where he met with first responders on Thanksgiving.
The commander-in-chief railed against semiautomatic weapons, calling for their ban before the new Congress forms in January.
“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,” Biden argued.
When asked if it’s possible for Congress to pass sweeping gun control legislation during the lame-duck session of Congress, Biden responded that he’s “going to try.”
“I’m going to try to get rid of assault weapons,” he insisted.
However, in an evenly split Senate, the president is unlikely to have the 60 votes necessary to overcome a Republican filibuster and the opposition to a proposed ban on semiautomatic firearms.
“I’m going to do it whenever I — I got to make that assessment as I get in and start counting the votes,” Biden added.
The president also said that red flag laws — which allow law enforcement to seize weapons from individuals deemed to be a threat to themselves or others — need to be better enforced across the country.
He noted that his late son Beau Biden enforced them in Delaware where he served as attorney general — and that it saved lives.
The US has suffered three horrific mass shootings this month that have left 14 victims dead and more than 20 others injured.
Three football players at the University of Virginia were killed and two other students were injured on Nov. 13 when a classmate went on a shooting rampage aboard a bus that had just returned from a field trip to Washington, DC.
The alleged shooter was later apprehended by police.
On Nov. 19, five people were killed and 17 others were shot by gunman who opened fire inside Club Q, a LGBTQ+ nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The shooter was taken down by an Army veteran and a trans woman inside the club.
On Tuesday, six people were killed and three others wounded after a long-time Walmart employee in Chesapeake, Virginia, used a handgun to slaughter several of his coworkers inside a store break room. The shooter then killed himself as police arrived.