President Biden will provide a rare evening gun speech today to press US lawmakers to act as the US confronts another mass shooting.
Biden plans to discuss “the recent tragic mass shooting and the need for Congress to act to pass common sense legislation to combat the gun violence pandemic that is taking lives every day,” Biden said. The White House said in the speech.
The remarks would become Biden’s best speech on guns since last week’s massacre at a Texas elementary school.
Since then, another series of mass shootings have occurred in states around the country, including in Tulsa on Wednesday. That shooting left five people dead, including the gunman.
Within hours of the Texas massacre, Biden delivered an emotional seven-minute speech at the White House, calling repeated American gun murders “sickening.”
“Why? Why are we willing to live with this carnage? Why do we let this happen?” he asks.
Since then, however, Biden has engaged only selectively in the gun control debate, relentlessly endorsing any specific legislative action to prevent further carnage.
On Wednesday, the president expressed unwarranted optimism that Congress will 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 was never confident, completely,” Biden said when asked if he believed lawmakers would agree on new gun legislation.
“It depends. So I don’t know,” Biden said. “I didn’t enter the negotiations because they are happening right now.”
The lukewarm response is a sign that Biden is wary of combining too closely with early efforts on Capitol Hill to strike a gun control compromise.
While Biden on Tuesday said he would talk to lawmakers about guns, the White House later said he would only join when the time was right.
Both Biden and his advisers say they have run out of options for executive action to tackle the gun issue, though continue to explore avenues for unilateral action.
“There’s a Constitution. I can’t order these things. I can do the things I’ve done, and any executive action I can take, I’ll keep taking. But I can’t order. outlaw weapons, I can’t change the background check. I can’t do that,” he said Monday.
Speaking a day after comforting families in Texas, Biden expressed limited hope that some Republicans, like Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell and one of his top allies , Senator John Cornyn of Texas, could be persuaded to support some kind of new gun law.
“I don’t know, I think there’s recognition from the rational Republicans, and I consider McConnell to be a rational Republican, as is Cornyn. There is a recognition on their part that that they can’t go on like this,” he said.
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