Last updated on July 18th, 2023 at 11:31 am
Former vice president Joe Biden is vowing to ban assault weapons and expand background checks if he is elected president in 2020.
Biden wrote in a New York Times op-ed:
Nearly 70 percent of the American public support a ban on assault weapons — including 54 percent of Republicans.
To get more stories like this, subscribe to our newsletter The Daily.
When you have that kind of broad public support for legislation that will make their families safer, and it still can’t get through the Senate — the problem is with weak-willed leaders who care more about their campaign coffers than children in coffins.
The 1994 assault weapons and high-capacity magazines bans worked.
And if I am elected president, we’re going to pass them again — and this time, we’ll make them even stronger. We’re going to stop gun manufacturers from circumventing the law by making minor modifications to their products — products that were equally deadly. And this time, we’re going to pair it with a buyback program to get as many assault weapons off our streets as possible as quickly as possible.
I won’t stop there. I’ll get universal background checks passed, building on the Brady act establishing the background check system that I helped push through Congress in 1993. I’ll accelerate the development and deployment of smart-gun technology — something gun manufacturers have opposed — so that guns are keyed to the individual biometrics of authorized owners.
Joe Biden is doing something wild in the era of Trump. He is offering voters policies that they support. Voters want to expand Obamacare, Biden has a plan to expand the ACA. Voters want to expand background checks and an assault weapons ban, and Biden is vowing to deliver for voters.
Trump and the Republican Party are out of step with the rest of the country on many issues. Biden is more in step with where the country is than Trump could ever hope to be.
This isn’t rocket science. Give the people the policies that they want, and the odds are good that you’ll win in November.
For more discussion about this story join our Rachel Maddow and MSNBC group.
Follow Jason Easley on Facebook
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
