President Joe Biden on Nov. 24 called for “much stricter gun laws,” saying that he plans to push for a ban on “assault weapons” during the lame duck Congress while labeling the idea of allowing “semiautomatic weapons” to be purchased as “sick.”
Biden made the remarks after a meeting with local firefighters in Nantucket, Massachusetts, when he was asked to comment on a recent shooting at a Virginia Walmart, in which the perpetrator shot and killed six people before turning the gun on himself.
“I’m sick and tired of these shootings. We should have much stricter gun laws,” Biden said.
Biden first called for tougher enforcement of existing red-flag laws, which allow authorities to take guns away from people deemed dangerous.
“It saves lives. So that’s number one,” Biden said of red-flag laws, also known as extreme risk protection orders (ERPO).
While some studies, like one from the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence (pdf) and another from the University of Michigan’s Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention, claim that ERPOs can help reduce suicides and mass shootings, research from the RAND Corporation found the evidence inconclusive.
At the meeting in Nantucket, the president also took aim at semi-automatic guns.
Biden, who has previously called for banning semi-automatic firearms, including handguns, said that “the idea we still allow semi-automatic 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 continued, adding that he would push for a ban on assault weapons during the lame duck Congress.
“I’m going to do it whenever … I got to make that assessment as I get in and start counting the votes,” Biden added.
Red-Flag Laws
While there are no federal ERPO regulations, a number of states have adopted red-flag laws.
By Tom Ozimek
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