Biden Promises Renewed Assault Weapons Ban If Elected

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden speaks on stage during a forum on gun safety on August 10, 2019 in Des Moines, Iowa. (Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)
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Former Vice President Joe Biden wrote an op-ed in the New York Times Sunday promising a new assault weapons ban, should he be elected.

Biden takes hits at Senate Republicans in the piece. “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,” he wrote.

Though he promises the passage of the bill — along with banning high capacity magazines, expanding background checks and developing smart gun technology — he does not explain how he’d do so if Republicans, say, hold the Senate in 2020.

“If we cannot rise to meet this moment, it won’t just be a political failure,” Biden writes. “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.”

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  1. Avatar for jmacaz jmacaz says:

    How is it possible that Biden thinks he alone can do this? Please go away Joe. Any elected Democrat will attempt to do the same.

  2. “Because I work well with segregationists, I will get Mitch McConnell to work with me on this…”

  3. “If we cannot rise to meet this moment, it won’t just be a political failure,” Biden writes. “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.”

    Where you been, Joe Hands? It has already been that way for a few decades now.

    And "thoughts and prayers will grow increasingly hollow”?? As if “thoughts and prayers” have ever been anything but hollow and meaningless platitudes offered by your racist Republican buddies.

    Go away, Joe. You’re so last century.

  4. A assault weapons ban is a bandaid on a gushing wound. It will be ineffective, and even counterproductive.

    We need to outlaw all semiautomatic weapons - (both semi longarms and handguns). It will not take a constitutional amendment - just a responsible congress. There was no need for a change to the constitution when full auto weapons were outlawed in 1934. A change in the technology required a change in the rules. The same thing happened in the early 70s - I was there, I was a gun hobbyist, I saw it happen. Semiautomatic weapon technology advanced, and the laws didn’t respond.

    Don’t let them lie to you anymore. A solution is possible.

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