Over the Thanksgiving holiday, President Joe Biden said he would launch a renewed effort to ban assault rifles amid a recent string of mass shootings across the country.
Biden, who spent Thanksgiving with his family in Nantucket, told reporters that such weapons are a threat to society and should be banned.
“The idea that we still allow semi-automatic weapons to be purchased is sick,” the president said while greeting firefighters in Nantucket. “It has no, no social redeeming value. Zero. None. Not a single solitary rationale for it except profit for the gun manufacturers.”
He also said that he would try to press for a ban in the congressional session before the Republicans retake the House in 2023, CNBC reports.
“I’m going to try,” Biden said. “I’m going to do it whenever I … I got to make that assessment as I get in and start counting the votes,” he added.
“I’m going to try and get rid of assault weapons,” Biden said.
According to the White House, the president and his wife, Jill, called the owners at Club Q, an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs where a mass shooting occurred earlier this month. As Christian Headlines previously reported, a gunman barged into the nightclub, fatally shot five people, and injured 25 others before being arrested by police.
“Places that are supposed to be safe spaces of acceptance and celebration should never be turned into places of terror and violence,” Biden said in a statement condemning the violence last week.
During the call with the Club Q owners on Thursday, Nic Grzecka and Matthew Haynes, the Bidens asserted that they are committed to fighting “hate and gun violence.”
In 1994, then-Delaware Senator Biden managed to bring forth an assault-weapons ban that helped curb deaths from mass shootings. That ban, however, expired a decade later and was not renewed during the presidency of George W. Bush.
Other recent shootings include one at a Walmart in Chesapeake, Virginia, last Tuesday, where a supervisor shot and killed six of his co-workers and left six others wounded.
Further, on November 13, a student opened fire at the University of Virginia, killing three students and wounding two more.
Related:
Gunman Kills 5, Injures 25 at LGBTQ Night Club in Colorado Springs
3 Killed, 2 Wounded in University of Virginia Shooting
Chesapeake Coalition of Black Pastors Holds Prayer Vigil for Walmart Shooting Victims
Photo courtesy: ©Getty Images/Drew Angerer/Staff
Milton Quintanilla is a freelance writer. He is also the co-hosts of the For Your Soul podcast, which seeks to equip the church with biblical truth and sound doctrine. Visit his blog Blessed Are The Forgiven.