The President of the United States, while unveiling six executive orders to reduce gun violence, likened the incidents to an epidemic and described it as a disgrace to the United States worldwide.
President Joe Biden announced a series of executive actions on Thursday to reduce gun violence and urged Congress to pass broader gun-control legislation.
The bundle of actions, Biden’s first attempt as president to tackle the fraught politics surrounding guns in America, was unveiled in the wake of a recent spate of mass shootings across the country, including Thursday in South Carolina, where five people were gunned down. In the past three weeks, other deadly mass shootings occurred in Georgia, Colorado and California.
“This is an epidemic, for God’s sake, and it has to stop,” Biden said in a Rose Garden speech.
The White House’s moves include directing the Department of Justice to craft a rule addressing the spread of untraceable “ghost guns” and publish an example of “red flag” legislation for states to follow.
Red-flag laws allow police or family members to petition a court to bar an individual from accessing firearms. Biden also called for a federal red-flag law, saying such legislation would prevent suicides, protect women from domestic violence, and stop mass shooters before they carry out an attack.
He said this morning,
We got a long way to go. It always seems like we always have a long way to go. But I also — today, we’re taking steps to confront not just the gun crisis, but what is actually a public health crisis. Nothing — nothing I’m about to recommend in any way impinges on the Second Amendment. They’re phony, arguments suggesting that these are Second Amendment rights at stake from what we’re talking about.
But no amendment — no amendment to the Constitution is absolute. You can’t yell crowd — you can’t tell [yell]* “fire” in a crowded movie theater and call it freedom of speech. From the very beginning, you couldn’t own any weapon you wanted to own. From the very beginning that the Second Amendment existed, certain people weren’t allowed to have weapons. So the idea is just bizarre to suggest that some of the things we’re recommending are contrary to the Constitution.
Gun violence in this country is an epidemic. Let me say it again: Gun violence in this country is an epidemic, and it’s an international embarrassment.
