SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS RADIO) – In a prime-time address from the White House on Thursday, President Joe Biden called on Congress to pass a number of gun control measures in the wake of a string of mass shootings across the country.
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Biden said he has had "enough" of congressional inaction to combat gun violence, calling for a ban on assault weapons, high-capacity magazines, stronger background checks, red flag and safe storage legislation, as well as the repeal of a 2005 law that shields gun manufacturers from liability in mass shootings.
The president said it was time for politicians on Capitol Hill to answer the call of the families of victims in Buffalo, New York, Uvalde, Texas, Tulsa, Oklahoma and other cities impacted by gun violence.
"They had one message for all of us: 'Do something. Just do something. For God's sake, do something,' " Biden said.
Biden touted legislation passed in the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives, including one that would expand background checks to people purchasing firearms online and at gun shows, as well as another that would expand the initial review period for federal gun background checks from three to 10 days.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a San Francisco Democrat, announced on Thursday in a letter to Democratic colleagues that the chamber is expected to vote next week on bills that would raise the purchasing age of semi-automatic weapons to 21 years old and ban high-capacity magazines and bump stocks.
Pelosi also said the chamber will hold a hearing on an assault weapons ban bill, similar introduced by California Sen. Dianne Feinstein and passed in 1994 that elapsed 10 years later.
Those measures face long odds of passage in the 50-50 Senate and heading to President Biden’s desk for signature. Biden called it "unconscionable" that Senate Republicans are unwilling to even debate legislation that already passed the House, but Quinnipiac University Professor Mark Gius told KCBS Radio that the Republican base has no appetite for those laws.
"The only way we’re gonna get even some of these measures passed is if we have 60 Democratic votes in the Senate," Gius, who studies crime and public policy, said in an interview with Jeff Bell and Margie Shafer on Thursday. "But about the only one I possibly see having some movement on is the red flag laws, maybe the safe storage laws, but that's about it."
A Politico/Morning Consult poll conducted after the Buffalo mass shootings found that 59% of voters think it's at least somewhat important for elected leaders to pass stricter gun laws, and 55% of U.S. adults responding to a YouGov survey following the Uvalde killings said a drastic change in laws could stop school shootings.
Gius called the 2005 liability law's repeal "pretty much a non-starter," and he said the assault weapons ban passed in a country where crime was much higher, mass shootings were far less infrequent and political divisions were not as deep.
Biden praised a bipartisan group of Senators, led by Texas Republican John Cornyn and Connecticut Democrat Chris Murphy, discussing a potential compromise measure in the chamber. Murphy tweeted on Wednesday that there's "growing momentum to get something done."
Biden, quoting Republican-appointed former Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s opinion in a 2008 ruling that said the Second Amendment gave Americans the right to own guns in their home, said that "the rights granted by the Second Amendment are not unlimited." Machine guns, Biden noted, have been federally regulated for nearly a century.
"How much more carnage are we willing to accept?" the president asked. "How many more innocent American lives must be taken before we say, 'Enough! Enough!' "
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