President Joe Biden offered more of his thoughts on gun control on Monday, expressing concern to reporters on the White House in regards to the lethality of contemporary weapons.
“The Structure, the Second Amendment, was never absolute. You couldn’t buy a cannon when the Second Amendment was passed,” Biden said.
The president and first lady Jill Biden are scheduled to attend a wreath-laying ceremony for Memorial Day on Monday at Arlington National Cemetery, and to satisfy with families of service members who’ve died.
Biden addressed questions by reporters on gun control after the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, last week that killed 19 children and two teachers. The Bidens visited the community on Sunday and grieved with the families. As people chanted “do something” as they were leaving a church, Biden said: “We’ll.”
When asked for more details on Monday, Biden talked about visiting a trauma center in Recent York and seeing the damage attributable to modern weapons.
“A 9 mm bullet blows the lung out of the body,” the president said. “There’s simply no rational basis for it by way of self-protection, hunting.”
While he hasn’t began negotiating with Republicans yet on any changes, he observed: “I feel things have gotten so bad that everyone is getting more rational about it.”
He then named Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) as possible “rational” Republicans in efforts to hunt compromise on laws.
Biden acknowledged that his ability to take motion with executive orders is proscribed. “I can do the things I’ve done and any executive motion I can take, I’ll proceed to take. But I can’t outlaw a weapon. I can’t change a background check. I can’t try this,” he said.
Biden has been an element of various efforts to regulate gun violence through the years. He was involved with the 1994 assault weapons ban, which expired in 2004. He was also a part of the failure to pass latest laws after the Sandy Hook massacre in 2012, which left 26 people dead.
McConnell has tasked Cornyn, who tweeted a defense of police personnel who were slow to reply to the Uvalde shooting, with starting discussions with Democrats to seek out a consensus on gun laws.
Each senators are among the many top five congressional recipients of funds from pro-gun groups, in line with OpenSecrets.org.
