What can Biden do about gun control after Sacramento shooting? Democrats are stalled in Congress
When Joe Biden entered office last year, gun-control advocates hoped he and a Democratic-controlled Congress would kick start a new era of laws and regulations tightening access to firearms and reducing gun violence.
It’s a promise that the president has, at most, only partially fulfilled.
The mass shooting in Sacramento this weekend that left six dead and another 12 injured is bringing fresh scrutiny to Biden’s attempts at restricting access to firearms, a record even supporters concede includes no signature legislative achievement despite a flurry of executive actions and efforts to fund local anti-violence measures.
And with the midterm elections expected to squeeze the legislative calendar this summer, advocates say they doubt Congress will take action anytime soon, even as tragedies like the one in downtown seemingly become frequent occurrences across the country.
“It is a 50-50 Senate,” said Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action, a group that advocates for restricting access to firearms. “And so people who are working on a variety of issues are frustrated about how difficult it is to pass anything through the Senate. It is intractable.”
Watts praised Biden for doing, in her words, more than any president in a generation to combat gun violence. And, indeed, Biden spoke often during his presidential campaign about making gun control a legislative priority, promising to ban assault weapons and expand background checks to include the sale of all firearms.
But efforts to pass legislation through Congress stalled last year. The Democratic-controlled U.S. House passed two gun control measures backed by Biden, one that would require background checks on all gun sales and transfers and another that would lengthen background checks from three days to up to 20. But lawmakers in the Senate, which is split evenly between Republicans and Democrats, didn’t approve either measure after attempts to find a bipartisan compromise failed.
Republicans can block passage of most legislation in the Senate if it fails to receive 60 votes, through a process known as the filibuster.
“It is tough to find a path to 60,” said Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, who has helped lead negotiations to find a compromise in the legislative body. “We have been very close several times over the last two years. I’ve been in productive negotiations with several Republicans on expansion to the background check system that can get us 60 votes.”
Murphy said he would “re-engage” with GOP lawmakers this week to see if “there’s an appetite to restart those discussions,” adding that he remained optimistic they could strike a deal.
White House officials defend their record in Congress, arguing that hundreds of billions of dollars allocated to state and municipalities as part of last year’s American Rescue Plan helped fund local police departments and other violence-prevention measures.
It’s part of a multi-pronged strategy from the White House to reduce gun-related violence, they say, one that includes executive actions to crack down on so-called “ghost guns” — weapons assembled in private that lack a serial number — and other modifications that can make firearms more deadly.
Biden’s gun control actions
Biden helped negotiate a law in 1994 that banned assault weapons, a provision that expired in 2004 when former GOP President George W. Bush held office. The legislation was one of the then-senator’s hallmark achievements during more than three decades in the Senate.
In a statement issued Sunday, he reiterated his call for Congress to expand background checks and ban assault weapons and urged it to pass his recently proposed budget, which would direct additional money to cities to fight crime.
“But we must do more than mourn; we must act,” Biden said. “That is why my administration has taken historic executive action to implement my comprehensive gun crime reduction strategy — from standing up gun trafficking strike forces to helping cities across the country expand community violence interventions and hire more police officers for community policing.”
Still, advocates and some Democrats argued that the president could act faster on some measures, like naming a new director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Biden last year was forced to withdraw the nomination of David Chipman to run the ATF, after he failed to win support of Republicans and some centrist Democratic senators like Joe Manchin of West Virginia.
“The administration can act with some urgency here,” Murphy said. “I know the administration is focused on Ukraine, but there are, you know, 100 people dying every day here in this country and we need both Congress and the administration to be acting with urgency.”
California’s strict gun laws
California has the strictest gun laws of any state in the nation. But state laws fall short, according to Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg, “when we don’t have a national commitment to reducing gun violence.”
“Others have said, and it’s so true, you just have to go to a gun show in Reno to buy an assault weapon without a background check and come right back to California,” he told CapRadio’s Insight on Monday morning.
House Republicans have blamed Sacramento’s rise in violence on Democrats’ efforts in police reformation, such as the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. The bill — named for the Black man killed by a police officer in Minneapolis, Minn., on May 25, 2020 — would ban no-knock warrants and chokeholds federally, limit qualified immunity shielding for police in civil lawsuits and install a framework to prevent racial profiling, among other measures.
It passed the House this summer on party lines, with one Republican voting for it and two Democrats voting against.
California Republicans have also pointed to state measures on police reform like those made in the wake of Floyd’s murder.
“What happened in Sacramento this weekend was senseless and heartbreaking, and I’m praying for the families and loved ones of the six individuals who lost their lives,” Rep. David Valadao, R-Hanford, told The Bee on Monday. “The rise in violent crime in our communities is unacceptable, and now more than ever we need to make sure our law enforcement officers have the resources they need to protect our communities and that people who commit these crimes are held accountable.”
“California’s soft on crime policies have made it easier for people to break the laws we already have in place to keep our neighbors safe,” he said.
McClatchyDC’s Francesca Chambers contributed to this story.
This story was originally published April 4, 2022 at 7:25 PM with the headline "What can Biden do about gun control after Sacramento shooting? Democrats are stalled in Congress."
