Joe Biden: Banning Assault Weapons Works
That’s why, as president, I will push to ban them again. - nyt opinion piece by biden maybe paywall
That’s why, as president, I will push to ban them again. - nyt opinion piece by biden maybe paywall
We have to get these weapons of war off our streets.
Nearly 70 percent of the American public support a ban on assault weapons — including 54 percent of Republicans.
When you have that kind of broad public support for legislation that will make everyone safer, and it still can’t get through the Senate — the problem is with weak-willed leaders who care more about their campaign coffers than children in coffins.
The 1994 assault weapons and high-capacity magazines bans worked.
And if I am elected president, we’re going to pass them again — and this time, we’ll make them even stronger. We’re going to stop gun manufacturers from circumventing the law by making minor modifications to their products — modifications that leave them just as deadly. And this time, we’re going to pair it with a buyback program to get as many assault weapons off our streets as possible as quickly as possible...
If we cannot rise to meet this moment, it won’t just be a political failure. It will be a moral one. It will mean that we accept the next inevitable tragedy. That we are desensitized to children running from schools and bodies littering parking lots, that our outpouring of thoughts and prayers will grow increasingly hollow.
It’s unacceptable that children learn to fear mass shooters alongside their ABCs, that people feel unsafe on their weekly grocery run, and that families everywhere experience increasing anxiety that they are simply not safe anywhere in the United States.
I, for one, won’t stand for that. And the American people are with me.