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President Joe Biden on Friday night harshly criticized the use of high capacity assault weapons in his first public remarks on gun violence following this week’s shooting in Maine that left at least 18 people dead.
Speaking at a campaign fundraiser in Washington, D.C., Biden asked: “Who the hell needs an assault weapon that can hold, in some cases, up to 100 rounds?”
Without referring to the Lewiston shootings directly, Biden said it was “outrageous what’s happening.”
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Police named Robert Card, 40, a firearms instructor and an Army reservist, as a suspect in the Lewiston shootings. He was found dead Friday.
The assault rifle-style weapon he is alleged to have used was purchased legally this year, two senior law enforcement officials briefed on the matter said.
Biden has repeatedly called on Congress to send legislation to his desk banning assault weapons.
In a statement Thursday, Biden urged congressional Republicans to work with Democrats to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, to enact universal background checks, to require safe storage of guns, and to suspend gun manufacturers’ “immunity from liability.”
“This is the very least we owe every American who will now bear the scars — physical and mental — of this latest attack,” Biden said in the statement.
Getting an assault weapons ban bill through the current Congress is highly unlikely.
In his first televised interview as the new House speaker, Rep. Mike Johnson brushed off calls for an assault weapons ban. The Louisiana Republican on Thursday told Fox News’ Sean Hannity: “The problem is the human heart. It’s not guns, it’s not the weapons.”
White House spokesperson Andrew Bates responded in a statement saying Republicans have “spent decades” siding with gun industry lobbyists and “bending over backwards to ensure weapons of war remain on our streets and in dangerous hands.”
Congress last passed a federal ban on assault weapons in 1994; it expired a decade later when Republicans controlled both chambers.
The Democratic-led House last year passed an assault weapons ban, but Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has not brought a similar bill to the floor for a vote. The House is now controlled by Republicans.
