Biden calls for ban on assault weapons due to attacks on Trump

“It’s time to ban them,” Biden said Tuesday at the NAACP convention in Las Vegas, adding, “I’ve done it once and I’ll do it again.” As a senator, Biden successfully negotiated a 10-year ban on assault rifles in 1994.

“More children die from gunshot wounds in America than from any other cause,” he said at the convention. “It’s shocking and sick. And it’s pure cowardice if we don’t do something about it.”

One bystander was killed and two others were seriously injured in the attack. Trump said a bullet hit his ear, and he appeared Monday with a white bandage on the Republican’s ear. Authorities say the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, used an AR rifle that belonged to his father. The AR-15 is the best-selling rifle in the United States, according to industry sources.

The weapon has been used in most of the deadliest mass shootings in the United States since 2012. The high-velocity weapon fires a volley of bullets, often 30 but as many as 100, in rapid succession, each of which can reach a speed that would cross six football fields in one second. Its popularity skyrocketed after the 1994 ban on assault rifles expired in 2004.

Renewing that ban has proven an insurmountable challenge two decades later, despite Biden’s repeated desire to do so. The 1994 ban was a signature achievement of his career. It was added during the Clinton presidency by Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) as an amendment to a sweeping crime bill that Biden pushed through Congress. But now he faces a very different political landscape.

The abhorrence of high-profile shootings has not, in most cases, led to increased controls. Some restrictions on gun sales have been struck down by the courts, and supporters of gun control measures have often faced opposition in Congress and an uphill battle for public opinion in parts of the country.

A significant exception was Biden’s signing of a bipartisan gun control bill in 2022, following the mass shootings in Uvalde and Buffalo. The bill funded mental health services and school safety initiatives, expanded criminal background checks for some gun buyers, banned a larger group of domestic violence offenders from purchasing firearms, and funded programs that would allow authorities to confiscate guns from problem individuals.

The attack on Trump does not appear to have fundamentally changed his party’s views on gun control. A senior adviser to his presidential campaign, Chris LaCivita, said Tuesday at a gun rights group event during the Republican National Convention that if elected, Trump would appoint judges who oppose new gun restrictions and thereby “continue to support and defend the Second Amendment,” Reuters reported.