President Joe Biden on Thursday announced that he would make another attempt to secure passage of an assault weapons ban during the lame duck session of Congress.
“The idea [that] we still allow semi-automatic weapons to be purchased is sick,” Biden said, according to The Hill. “It’s just sick. It has no, no social redeeming value. Zero. None. Not a single, solitary rationale for it except profit for the gun manufacturers.”
Biden has called for a renewed assault weapons ban several times this year, including after the Uvalde school shooting and a separate violent incident in Raleigh.
Earlier this year, the House of Representatives passed an assault weapons ban, but it stalled in the Senate in the face of overwhelming Republican opposition. No Senate Republican has yet come out in favor of such legislation, making success in the upper chamber near impossible.
Nevertheless, Biden said he was “going to try to get rid of assault weapons” and he was “going to do it whenever I — I got to make that assessment as I get in and start counting the votes.”
Biden’s call comes in the wake of another string mass shootings, including one at a Virginia Walmart, one at the University of Virginia, and one at an LGBT nightclub in Colorado.
The House legislation mirrored assault weapons bans in place in blue states like New York. Spearheaded by Democratic Rhode Island Rep. David Cicilline, that bill would bar the purchase, manufacture, and transfer of certain semi-automatic weapons that sport a host of external features such as foregrips and extendable stocks.
Cicilline’s legislation received only two Republican votes in the House of Representatives and one of them, New York Rep. Chris Jacobs will not return to the next session of Congress. Jacobs announced earlier this year that he would support an assault weapons ban, prompting outrage from his constituents and leading him to opt against a reelection effort.
With the GOP set to take over the House next year, the prospects of an assault weapons ban will diminish considerably, given near unanimous Republican opposition to such an effort.
