Latest Biden News: Gun Control Groups Praise ‘Big Progress’ As Biden Signs Monterey Park Executive Order

There were at least 17 mass shootings in the United States in the first few days of March, bringing the total number of mass shootings this year to over 100.

According to the Gun Violence Archive, there were 52 mass shootings in January and 40 in February.

Up to this point last year, there were 85 mass shootings.

The organization also determined that the number of non-fatal shootings in the US reached 6,000 in the first two and a half months of 2023.

At least 3,549 people were killed by artillery fire.

In the text of his executive order, the president once again urged congressmen to renew the assault weapons ban, which expired in 2004.

The Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Protection Act, known as the Federal Assault Weapons Ban, was passed in 1994 and expired in 2004, with several failed attempts to renew the ban in Congress after a series of high-powered rifle massacres that were previously under the influence of the law.

A study by Northwestern University found that the ban prevented 11 mass shootings during its decade in effect. The study also estimated that keeping the ban until 2019 would have prevented 30 public shootings that left 339 people dead and 1,139 injured.

Last year, the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives narrowly voted to renew the ban, which stalled in an evenly divided Senate.

“I continue to urge Congress to take additional action to reduce gun violence, including by banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, requiring background checks on all gun sales, requiring safe storage of firearms, funding my comprehensive Safer America plan, and expanding strategies for intervention and prevention of violence in the community,” the president wrote in his order.

“In the meantime, my administration will continue to do everything within its existing powers to keep our communities safer,” he added.

An expansive executive order that President Joe Biden will sign into law Tuesday will expand the provisions of the bilateral gun control legislation signed last year and direct his cabinet and federal agencies to develop a plan to enforce background checks and hold firearms dealers accountable. .

But to close critical loopholes in the background check system and achieve a so-called “universal” background check process for firearm sales, not to mention renewing the federal assault weapons ban that expired in 2004, the president needs the help of Congress.

The newly Republican-controlled House of Representatives is unlikely to move any of these issues forward, despite the narrow Democratic majority in the US Senate.

“In the meantime, he wants the federal government to do everything we can to reduce gun violence, and that’s what this executive order is doing,” a senior administration official told reporters ahead of the president’s visit to Monterey Park on Tuesday.

The city was the scene of a mass shooting that left 11 people dead and nine others injured in January. Two days later, another shooting in Half Moon Bay, California, killed seven people.

In the first three months of 2023, there were more than 100 mass shootings in the United States. Last year there were over 600.

President Joe Biden will meet the families of the victims of the Monterey Park mass shooting during his visit to California on Tuesday as he makes remarks and signs an executive order to combat gun violence and gun proliferation in the US.

A senior administration official told reporters ahead of the visit that the president’s order “will mean fewer guns will be sold without a background check, and therefore fewer guns will end up in the hands of criminals and domestic offenders.”

Former President Jimmy Carter entered home hospice last month with “the full support of his family and medical team,” according to a statement from his Carter Center.

The announcement followed serious health issues for the oldest living former president, including being diagnosed with melanoma in 2015 that had spread to his liver and brain. His center announced later that year that he was cancer-free.

The Carter Center’s announcement did not indicate whether the cancer had returned or whether the 98-year-old former president was suffering from another medical problem that prompted his decision to enter home hospice.

Speaking at a California fundraiser on Monday night, President Joe Biden said he “spent some time with Jimmy Carter and eventually caught up with him, but they found a way to keep him alive much longer than they expected because they found a breakthrough.”

“He asked me to give a eulogy,” he added. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”

His accidental revelation is not necessarily a surprise; Mr. Biden has a long relationship with the oldest living former president, having received the endorsement of then-Senator Biden in 1976.

Years later, Mr. Carter and his wife Rosalynn Carter endorsed Mr. Biden by announcing a video at the 2020 Democratic National Convention, describing the Democratic nominee as his “first and most effective supporter in the Senate.”

President Joe Biden’s administration is proposing the first-ever national drinking water standard to protect Americans from dangerous “forever chemicals.”

The plan presented Tuesday by the Environmental Protection Agency would set legally enforceable levels for six per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFASs, known to be present in drinking water.

Gun reform advocacy groups welcomed an executive order announced by the Biden White House on Tuesday, which Brady hailed as “significant progress” on the road to universal background checks.

“While ultimately we can only achieve universal background checks through congressional legislative action, President Biden’s announcement today brings us closer to that reality than any other president who has come before,” Brady President Kris Brown said in a statement.

Former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who survived the 2011 assassination attempt and mass shooting, said in a statement that “more needs to be done, but there is no telling how many lives will be saved by the significant actions announced today.”

Everytown for Gun Safety said Biden’s ordinance would improve “community safety, hold the gun industry and rogue gun dealers in our communities accountable, and save lives.”

Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action, called the order a “life saver.”

Transport Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s husband sent Mike Pence a picture of his hospitalized baby in an angry response to a former vice president’s maternity leave joke.

The White House has called on Mr Pence to apologize for a so-called “homophobic” joke about the transportation secretary’s decision to take paternity leave after the birth of his twin boys.

President Joe Biden lamented the “cruel” treatment of trans youth in Florida in an interview with The Daily Show as Chief Ron DeSantis and Republican state lawmakers roll out a series of policies targeting gender-affirming transgender care in the state.

“What is happening in Florida is, as my mother would say, close to sinful. It’s terrible what they’re doing,” the president said during an interview with Kal Penn of The Daily Show.

“It’s not like a kid wakes up one morning and says, ‘You know, I’ve decided I want to be a man’ or ‘I want to be a woman’ … I mean, what are they thinking here? They’re human beings. They love, they have feelings, they have inclinations,” he added. “It’s just for me, I don’t know. It’s cruel.

President Joe Biden is expected to sign an executive order on Tuesday to increase the number of background checks for gun purchases, promote better and safer firearms storage, and ensure US law enforcement makes full use of the bipartisan Gun Control Act passed last year summer.

The Democratic president plans to reveal his latest efforts to reduce gun violence in a speech in Monterey Park, California, said a senior White House official who discussed the ordinance before signing it on the condition of anonymity. In January, a gunman attacked a dance hall in a community near Los Angeles and shot and killed 20 people, killing 11, after celebrating the Lunar New Year.

Biden’s rhetoric has only grown stronger on guns – he routinely calls for the banning of so-called assault weapons in his speeches – and the Democrats didn’t push such a vociferous anti-gun platform even under the Obama administration when Biden was vice president. But Biden has been emboldened by the intervening periods after his regular gun control talks failed to cause massive losses, and he is expected to continue pushing for strong changes as he approaches the 2024 run, his associates say.

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