After 10 people died, including a police officer, in a Boulder, Colo. supermarket shooting, President Joe Biden addressed the nation on Tuesday with a brief speech calling for gun control and urging Congress to act “immediately.”
Biden said, “I don’t need to wait another minute, let alone an hour, to take common sense steps that will save lives in the future, and to urge my colleagues in the House and the Senate to act.”
“We can ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines in this country once again. I got that done when I was a senator. It passed, it was the law for the longest time and it brought down these mass killings. We should do it again,” he added.
Biden specifically said “loopholes” in the national background check system should be closed, calling it “one of the best tools we have right now to prevent gun violence.”
Earlier this month, the House passed HR 8, the Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2021 with a vote of 227-203, which forbids the transfer of weapons between individuals without a background check, including in private sales.
The House also passed HR 1446, the Enhanced Background Checks Act, which imposes an FBI hold limit of up to 30 days on transfers pending a background check, up from a current hold limit of three days.
Both bills were sent to the Senate, and Biden said senators should “immediately” pass the bills, calling it “an American issue.”
Boulder, Colo. itself had banned “assault weapons” in 2018, but a court had blocked the ban just 10 days ago. It’s unclear if the ban would’ve had any impact on the Monday shooting.
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