Biden is expected to be briefed on the deadly shooting on Tuesday morning, two White House officials said, and plan to comment on the shooting later in the day. He planned to travel to Ohio to promote the anniversary of the Affordable Care Act.
Vice President Kamala Harris called the shooting Tuesday ‘absolutely tragic’, but ignored a question about the future of gun control during an affidavit of William Burns as director of the CIA.
The president’s team has been meeting with gun control advocates for the past two months to discuss potential executive action and generate ideas on possible ways forward, according to people familiar with the meetings. The meetings are chaired by Susan Rice, Director of the Home Policy Council, and Cedric Richmond, a senior adviser to Biden and director of the White House Public Relations Office.
Richmond, who spoke on MSNBC on Tuesday morning, said: “The regular sentiment of hearts and prayers is not enough.”
“We need action on this in the country,” he said, noting that legislation had recently been passed in the House. “This president has broken a record of the fight against the NRA and them, and we must ensure that we have sensible gun regulations in this country to ensure security. And therefore we must act, not just words and prayers.”
Among the executive actions that Biden can promote are the requirements for investigating ‘ghost weapons’ that do not have serial numbers, or strengthening the federal background check system to alert law enforcement agencies when someone fails a check. Biden also said he would instruct the attorney general to better enforce existing gun laws. And advocates have come up with the idea of sending more federal money to communities plagued by gun violence.
But some advocates have walked away from meetings in the White House without a clear picture of the timeline for revealing any arms control steps or a legislative plan to promote gun control measures in an evenly divided Congress. It was not clear from the meetings whether Biden would support the removal of the filibuster for gun control legislation.
According to a person familiar with the meeting, during his private meeting with Asian community leaders in Atlanta last week, he briefly raised concerns about gun control. Biden expressed his support for the expansion of background tests, but did not offer a timeline and later made no mention of gun control during public remarks at Emory University.
Ultimately, gun control issues – facing an uphill battle for a Senate-controlled Senate – are further on Biden’s list of legislative priorities than issues such as infrastructure and immigration.
As a candidate, Biden said on his first day in office that he would send a bill to Congress that would repeal the protection of liability for gun manufacturers and close loopholes in the background, which he has yet to take seven weeks in office.
“It remains a commitment, a personal commitment by the President, to do more for the security of arms, to introduce more measures, to use the power of the presidency, to work with Congress. And “There is definitely an important role for the Attorney General and the Department of Justice to play in this regard,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said last Thursday. “Unfortunately, you do not have any updates for you today. “But it’s an issue he’s committed to.”
The Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to hold a hearing on Tuesday on the future of gun control in the Senate. Two bills passed by the House have been tackled on who can buy a gun and how to close loopholes on background checks, but the votes are not there in the 50-50 Senate to pass the house bills, or a ban on assault weapons or a restriction on magazines. Despite this, Schumer undertook to bring the universal bill of account for the background test to the floor.
The bottleneck between Republicans and Democrats over background checks is whether there should be exceptions and if so, to whom they should apply. Most legislators agree that if you are going to buy a gun from a licensed firearms dealer or a gun show, you need to investigate the background. What they disagree on is whether you should do a background check if you are selling a gun to a family member or friend or transferring a gun privately?
Therefore, the dual agreement from 2013 signed by Sens. Joe Manchin, D-West Virginia and Pat Toomey, R-Pennsylvania, signed an important agreement. It compromised and would have required the background of all commercial sales of guns. But it failed in 2013 and is not the legislation the Democrats currently want to vote for.
CNN’s Lauren Fox and Jeremy Diamond contributed to this report.