Calls for anti-gun reforms following the latest mass shooting — this one in San Jose, California — has been muted, with the Biden White House and congressional Democrats contending with competing priorities before a Memorial Day legislative break.
Inaction could create problems for President Joe Biden and Capitol Hill Democrats contesting elections in 2022 with a frustrated liberal base and single-issue voters after they helped the party last year claw back control of Washington.
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Former California Democratic Party adviser Bob Mulholland excused the reactions since law enforcement is still determining why a lone gunman this week shot dead nine people, including some Valley Transportation Authority employees, before turning his weapon on himself as police arrived at the light-rail yard.
“Political leaders should keep their remarks of mass shootings to a moderate response to not get in the way of full investigations, including interviewing witnesses,” Mulholland told the Washington Examiner. “Even local authorities work hard to immediately keep separate the witnesses, so they don’t come to conclusions about what they saw.”
Yet anti-gun activists were quick to push the Senate to consider House-passed bills that would, among other measures, tighten background check requirements for people seeking to purchase a firearm.
“On the face of it, a train yard in San Jose has little in common with a FedEx warehouse in Indianapolis or a nail salon in Atlanta, but over the course of just a few months, all of these workplaces have become places of horrific mass shootings,” Everytown for Gun Safety President John Feinblatt wrote shortly after the San Jose incident. “We implore the Senate to meet this moment, and back up their thoughts and prayers with bipartisan action on background checks, as the Americans are so clearly demanding.”
This week’s tragedy is the country’s 15th mass killing of 2021, defined as sprees resulting in four fatalities, excluding the shooter. This year’s death count so far is 86, compared to 106 during all of 2020, according to data collected by the Associated Press, USA Today, and Northeastern University.
In a statement, Biden reflected on ordering federal government flags to be flown at half-staff after the shootings at spas in and around Atlanta, in a grocery store in Boulder, Colorado, at a home in Rock Hill, South Carolina, and at the FedEx facility in Indianapolis.
“Enough,” he wrote. “Once again, I urge Congress to take immediate action and heed the call of the American people, including the vast majority of gun owners, to help end this epidemic of gun violence in America.”
He added, “Every life that is taken by a bullet pierces the soul of our nation. We can, and we must, do more.”
Yet when asked whether his administration would be taking further executive action, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said other unilateral options are still being reviewed.
“There’s a legal and policy review process for that, so it’s not that it can be expedited, it’s ongoing,” she told reporters Thursday. “But it’s a reminder to everyone, people who work in government, people in the public, about the need for additional gun safety measures.”
And Karine Jean-Pierre, Psaki’s deputy, a day earlier declined to name any Republicans Biden had pushed to support the Democratic bills. Biden pitched the measures, along with an “assault” weapons and high-capacity magazines ban, to the GOP during his first address to Congress last month.
“The president made some historic proposal, plans of his DOJ just about a month and a half ago, which is the most — which is kind of historic when you think about what presidents have done in the past when it comes to dealing with gun violence prevention,” Jean-Pierre, said, referring to the Justice Department.
Pressure to act is likely to catch up with Biden sooner rather than he expected, according to a national Quinnipiac University poll released this week. The survey found 49% of respondents approved of Biden’s performance as president, while 41% disapproved. Yet only 34% approved of Biden’s handling of “gun policy,” where 49% disapproved and 17% did not offer researchers an opinion.
Biden’s first raft of anti-gun executive actions was criticized by activists for being narrow in scope. He directed the Justice Department in April to draft rules regarding “the proliferation of ‘ghost guns'” and to “make clear” that a stabilizing brace converts a pistol into a short-barreled rifle under the National Firearms Act. He also requested that the Justice Department write model “red flag” legislation for states and nominated David Chipman to lead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.
Chipman, though, is poised to become only the second ATF director to be confirmed by the full Senate, with Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona not signaling their intention to oppose him for the position.
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The White House’s top priority is passing some version of Biden’s $1.7 trillion infrastructure proposal. Senate Republicans counteroffered on Thursday with a $928 billion compromise plan, though the White House can muscle a more generous package through the deadlocked Senate with only Democratic votes by using the budget parliamentary procedure known as reconciliation.
