President Joe Biden on Tuesday addressed a major gun safety conference in Washington, telling attendees their work is needed to overcome the gun lobby and taking a few jabs at his predecessor and 2024 competition, former President Donald Trump.
“We need you,” Biden told the crowd at the Washington Hilton on Tuesday. “We need you to overcome the unrelenting opposition of the gun lobby, gun manufacturers, so many politicians when they oppose common sense gun legislation.”
Biden used his remarks at the Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund’s Gun Sense University – its annual training conference – to run through a list of what he sees as his administration’s biggest accomplishments on the issue, including the recent announcement of a rule seeking to close the so-called “gun show loophole” by expanding which firearm sellers must acquire a federal license and run background checks, opening the White House’s first office of gun violence prevention and most notably signing the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, considered the most sweeping gun violence bill in decades.
“That’s why we did it, to send a clear, a clear message about how important this issue is to me, to you and to the entire country,” Biden said on Tuesday.
Tuesday’s speech came just ahead of the two-year anniversary of the passage of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which helped states put in place red flag laws that make it easier for authorities to take weapons from people adjudged to be dangerous and toughened background checks for young gun buyers.
Biden on Tuesday noted that since the bill became law in June 2022, the FBI stopped more than 700 sales of firearms to people under 21 years old. The White House noted that the federal gun trafficking law and straw purchasing provisions created by the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, meanwhile, has led to the Department of Justice charging more than 500 violators.
“You’re changing the nation,” Biden said on Tuesday. “It builds upon the dozens of executive actions my administration has taken to reduce gun violence – more than any of my predecessors and I suspect more than all of them combined.”
The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, shepherded through Congress by Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn and Connecticut Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy, came together in the wake of shootings in Buffalo, New York and Uvalde, Texas and is widely considered the most significant gun legislation since Congress passed a ban on certain semi-automatic weapons in 1994, which has since expired.
The president on Tuesday also touted his administration’s crack down on ghost guns, which do not have serial numbers. But the move faces legal uncertainty and the Supreme Court recently agreed to take up the administration’s appeal to lower court decisions striking it down.
Biden also used his remarks to reiterate his calls for Congress to pass a national red flag law, universal background checks and ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.
“Who in God’s name needs a magazine that can hold 200 shells,” Biden said before going on to call them “weapons of war.”
The president's remarks at the gun safety event came just hours after his son, Hunter Biden, was found guilty of three charges in a federal firearms case. Biden did not mention the case during his remarks.
The Democratic president’s reelection campaign on Tuesday also made clear it believes the issue could give them a boost with key groups of voters on the campaign trail. In a memo on Tuesday, the campaign noted the topic is particularly salient with Black, Latino and Young voters – three critical voting blocs that polls show are less enthusiastic about Biden so far this election than they have been in the past.
“You’ve help power a movement that is turning this cause into a reality, especially young people who demanded our nation do better to protect us all,” Biden said.
Biden on Tuesday also criticized Trump for his comments following a school shooting in Iowa earlier this year in which he expressed condolences before saying people have to get “over it.”
“Hell no we don’t have to get over it,” Biden said. “We gotta stop it, we gotta stop it and stop it now.”
Tuesday’s memo from Biden’s campaign also accuses Trump, who Biden is likely to face in a rematch this November, of siding with the National Rifle Association “over America’s safety.” Trump has been endorsed by the NRA and spoken at two events for the group this year.
“My predecessor told the NRA convention recently he’s proud that quote, ‘I did nothing on guns when I was president,’” Biden said. “And by doing nothing he made the situation considerably worse.”