(RoyalPatriot.com )- Last week, President Joe Biden renewed his calls for an all-out ban on assault weapons, saying the fact that people have the ability to buy semi-automatic weapons is “just sick.”
Biden made those comments while appearing in Massachusetts at a press event, less than a week after a mass shooting at a nightclub in Colorado and only two days after a mass shooting at a Walmart in Virginia.
As he commented to those in attendance:
“The idea we still allow semi-automatic weapons to be purchased is sick. Just sick. It has no … social redeeming value. None. Not a single, solitary rationale for it except profit for the gun manufacturers.”
In general, a semi-automatic weapon is any firearm that is able to fire off a shot every time someone pulls the trigger. The weapon uses energy that the last shot creates to chamber the next round automatically — without the shooter having to cock it again.
If a full ban of these weapons were to occur in the U.S., just about every firearm would be outlawed, except for revolvers and most shotguns and modern rifles.
One of the reporters in the crowd asked the president what he intended to do in the last few weeks of the lame-duck Congress, before the new one takes over in early January. He responded:
“I’m going to try to get rid of assault weapons. I’m going to do it whenever — I’ve got to make that assessment as I get in and start counting votes.”
While Biden would have a decent shot at getting the measured passed through the lame-duck House, which is still controlled by Democrats, he’d be unlikely to garner enough support in the Senate, which is evenly split 50-50.
In order to get that measure passed, the president would need 60 votes, which means he’d need the support of 10 Republicans — and that’s if he were able to get the backing of all 50 Democrats.
That actually might be more doable for Biden than passing the bill at some point after early next year, when Republicans will be the controlling party in the House. It’s highly unlikely that Democrats would be able to even get that bill brought to the floor for a vote, let alone get it to pass.
The shooting in Colorado happened at Club Q, an LGBTQ club. Anderson Lee Aldrich, 25, was arrested for that shooting, which killed five people and injured another 25.
In Virginia, Walmart manager Andre Bing reportedly started shooting in the break room of his work in the city of Chesapeake. He killed six people in the attack, while two other people were injured, before turning the gun on himself, police said.
Following that shooting on Tuesday, Biden said he would work to take “greater action.” He stressed the need to “address the public health epidemic of gun violence in all of its forms,” which would include enacting “an assault weapons ban.”
