President Joe Biden was elected on a platform of sweeping gun control measures, describing gun violence as a “public health epidemic” during the campaign.
But he has made limited progress on that front due to his party’s razor-thin congressional majorities.
“We need a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. Don’t tell me it can’t be done,” Biden said in his first address to a joint session of Congress. “We did it before, and it worked.”
With the Senate deadlocked 50-50 and gun legislation subject to the filibuster, effectively creating a 60-vote threshold for passage, and the Democrats barely clinging on to a majority in the House, Biden has had to turn to executive actions to advance his priorities on gun policy.
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In an April ceremony at the White House with gun control activists present, Biden outlined regulatory steps to curtail homemade firearms lacking serial numbers popularly known as “ghost guns” and banning the type of pistol-stabilizing brace that was used in a Boulder, Colorado, shooting earlier this year. He also instructed the Justice Department to publish model “red flag” legislation for states, allowing family or law enforcement to seek court orders temporarily banning at-risk people from obtaining firearms.
“The President is committed to taking action to reduce all forms of gun violence — community violence, mass shootings, domestic violence, and suicide by firearm,” the White House said in a statement about the event. Biden also called on Congress to pass legislation strengthening background checks and repealing gun manufacturers’ immunity from liability.
“The gun issue was not at the top of Biden’s agenda, but circumstances have changed the calculus. His aggressive moves to use unilateral executive actions in several areas are significant changes that have widespread support (regulating ghost guns, stabilizing braces, model red flag law, etc.),” said Robert J. Spitzer, professor at State University of New York and author of The Politics of Gun Control. “Legislatively, he begins with three measures that have already passed the House, and that have overwhelming public support, as well as support from gun owners.”
“If the Senate cannot act on at least some of these, then that will be the end of any gun legislation for this Congress,” Spitzer continued. “These gun measures face the same two obstacles as the rest of Biden’s legislative agenda: the 50-50 party split and the filibuster.”
Mass shootings and rising levels of violent crime, combined with a National Rifle Association that has been weakened by financial and legal wrangling, have created momentum for Biden to act on gun control where his recent predecessors have not. He often cites his experience as a longtime senator from Delaware helping to pass the Brady Bill, which created the current system of mandatory background checks for most firearms purchases, and the since-expired federal assault weapons ban.
But the latter legislation helped cost Democrats control of Congress in the 1994 midterm elections, when they had much larger majorities than they boast today. The party subsequently downplayed the gun issue in national campaigns until a series of deadly, high-profile school shootings in places such as Sandy Hook and Parkland brought it back to the forefront.
Gun rights groups aren’t backing down.
“Joe Biden knows he cannot beat gun owners in Congress,” Erich Pratt of Gun Owners of America told the Washington Examiner. “Instead, he’s circumventing the legislative process to impose his own tyrannical vision by executive fiat.”
Spitzer added: “This time, the Democratic majorities are much slimmer, and the current era is more polarized.
“It is not clear that any Republican in the Senate will cross the party divide to support any major Biden-backed bill, whether on guns or anything else of significance.”
Democrats are also split on how much political capital should be spent on guns amid the pandemic and the related economic malaise.
“Getting people back to work and their kids back to school comes first, then the rest of the progressive agenda will follow,” said a Democratic strategist.
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Some of Biden’s lowest job approval ratings come on guns, as supporters of tighter restrictions want to see more action, and opponents are wary of the president’s stance on the Second Amendment. An Associated Press/NORC poll that found Biden with 63% approval overall, about 10 points higher than the polling averages on this question, showed just 48% approving his handling of guns to 49% who disapproved. The only other issue where he was underwater was immigration, amid the crisis at the border.
This is consistent with polling dating back to late March, when an ABC News/Ipsos poll found 57% disapproved of Biden’s performance on gun violence. That was as high as public disapproval of his handling of immigration.
