President Biden called for tightening gun laws, reviving debate on Capitol Hill and increasing pressure on Democrats as they weigh trying to change Senate rules to more easily pass their priorities.
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Biden Calls for Stronger Gun Control After Shooting in Colorado
Gun issue fans the debate over changing Senate rules to end decades of partisan stalemate
Biden Calls for Gun Restrictions Following Deadly Boulder Shooting
Police identified the suspected gunman who killed 10 people, including a police officer, after opening fire at King Soopers supermarket in Boulder, Colo., on Monday. Officials are investigating a possible motive in the shooting. Photo: Chet Strange/Getty Images
By
Kristina Peterson
Updated March 23, 2021 7:21 pm ET
WASHINGTON—President Biden called for tightening gun laws after
a deadly shooting at a supermarket in Colorado, reviving debate on Capitol Hill and increasing pressure on Democrats as they weigh trying to change Senate rules to more easily pass their priorities.
Mr. Biden urged Congress to pass legislation approved by the House earlier this month that would among other things expand background checks. He also called on Congress to ban assault-style weapons such as the kind used by the Boulder, Colo., suspect, who was identified Tuesday as 21-year-old Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa.
The Monday afternoon shooting, in which 10 people died, came less than a week after a gunman opened fire at spas in the Atlanta area,
killing eight people. The pair of killings, after a lull in such attacks during the pandemic, swiftly intensified a long-running debate on Capitol Hill about how to prevent such violence and moving it to the top of the new president’s agenda.
“I don’t need to wait another minute, let alone an hour, to take common sense steps that will save lives in the future,” Mr. Biden, a Democrat, said. The White House said he was also contemplating unspecified executive actions.
Republicans said many Democratic proposals would do little to address gun violence but would instead infringe on Second Amendment rights, underlining the starkly different stances of the parties in the face of decades of mass shootings through both Democratic and Republican administrations.
“Every time there’s a shooting we play this ridiculous theater where this committee gets together and proposes a bunch of laws that would do nothing to stop these murders,” said Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas), a member of the Judiciary Committee, which held a gun violence hearing Tuesday. “What happens in this committee after every mass shooting is Democrats propose taking away guns from law-abiding citizens because that’s their political objective.”
Democrats, who narrowly control the 50-50 Senate, said Tuesday that they would bring up for votes the House-passed legislation
to expand background checks to nearly all gun sales and extend the window for background checks to 10 days from three days, with the goal of flagging people with criminal or mental-health histories that disqualify them from gun ownership. But without the support of 10 Senate Republicans, those bills stand no chance of becoming law unless a bipartisan deal is struck or Democrats decide to change the chamber’s rules to require a simple majority to advance legislation instead of 60 votes.
“If the filibuster is the only thing that stops a wildly popular proposal from becoming law, then…it should be part of the conversation as to why the rules need to change,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D., Conn.), who became an outspoken proponent of tightening gun laws after the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting in his state in 2012. Mr. Murphy said Tuesday he was talking to both Democratic and GOP colleagues in hopes of reaching an agreement.
Proposals from Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) and others to ban the manufacture and sale of certain semiautomatic weapons and ban high-capacity ammunition magazines have failed in the Senate in previous years. A 1994 law that banned such magazines and limited such ammunition expired in 2004 and wasn’t renewed.
Mr. Biden, asked if he had enough political capital to move forward on gun-control measures in Congress, said, “I hope so. I don’t know. I haven’t done any counting yet.”
President Biden at the White House on Tuesday.
PHOTO: STEFANI REYNOLDS/BLOOMBERG NEWS
The White House didn’t elaborate on which executive actions the president is contemplating, but press secretary Jen Psaki said the administration was looking to “address not just gun safety measures but violence in communities.”
Gun-control groups have urged the president to take executive action, including appointing a senior aide tasked with gun-policy oversight and pursuing stricter enforcement of existing rules.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) said the Senate would vote on the House-passed legislation, although he didn’t specify when. He also didn’t indicate whether Democrats would seek to lower the threshold for passing legislation to just a simple majority if no bipartisan agreement can be reached.
On Tuesday, the House bills appeared short of even getting all Democrats onboard, with Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who had helped craft a bill expanding background checks in 2013, saying he didn’t support the House legislation.
The Senate narrowly blocked that 2013 legislation from Mr. Manchin and Sen. Pat Toomey (R., Pa.) that would have expanded background checks to all commercial sales, including all sales advertised online and at gun shows. Currently, the checks are needed only for sales by federally licensed dealers. The House bill expands background checks to nearly all sales but includes exemptions for family members and some temporary transfers while hunting or at a shooting range, for example.
Mr. Toomey said he was talking to colleagues about whether they could tweak the Manchin-Toomey proposal to garner enough bipartisan support.
“We’re having preliminary conversations, and I hope we can get something across the goal line, but it’s very difficult,” he said Tuesday. Mr. Toomey said he didn’t think the House gun bills could pass the Senate.
Democrats have been under pressure from the party’s left wing to take action against the filibuster, but the party is at least two votes shy of the 51 votes needed to eliminate it. Mr. Biden hasn’t advocated for getting rid of the filibuster but said last week that he supports bringing back a requirement that senators must be present and talking on the floor to block bills.
“Senators in Washington have a choice to make: save lives or save the filibuster. You cannot do both,” said Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, who is running for the state’s open Senate seat after Mr. Toomey retires.
Many Republicans said Tuesday that expanding background checks wouldn’t be sufficient to prevent many mass shootings because in many cases the shooters successfully cleared a background check. The Boulder suspect bought the Ruger AR-556 pistol used in the attack on March 16, according to his arrest affidavit.
It wasn’t yet known Tuesday how the suspect in the Boulder shooting obtained his firearm.Some Republicans including Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) have supported so-called red flag laws aimed at allowing courts to temporarily take guns from people deemed dangerous. Many Democrats support such measures but want to pass additional safeguards.
“I’m not trying to perfectly equate these two, but we have a lot of drunk drivers in America that kill a lot of people,” Sen. John Kennedy (R., La.) said during a Senate hearing Tuesday on reducing gun violence. “What many folks on my side of the aisle are trying to say is the answer is not to get rid of all sober drivers. The answer is to concentrate on the problem.”
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