President Biden praised the House’s passage of legislation to revive the ban on semi-automatic weapons on Friday, a step he said will “save lives in this country, and reduce crime in our communities.”
Mr. Biden vowed that he “will not stop fighting” until the evenly split Senate sends the bill to his desk.
“When guns are the number one killer of children in America, when more children die from guns than active-duty police and active-duty military combined, we have to act,” Mr. Biden said. “There can be no greater responsibility than to do all we can to ensure the safety of our families, our children, our homes, our communities, and our nation.”
The legislation, which passed the House 217-213, was nearly unanimously shunned by Republicans and is expected to stall in the 50-50 Senate.
The House’s momentum on banning high-powered firearms has been buoyed by nationwide disgust with a wave of mass shootings that has ripped through communities in recent months.
Congress placed a similar ban on assault-style weapons in the mid-1990s, while Mr. Biden served in the Senate, before those restrictions expired a decade later.
Mr. Biden has credited the ban for a decline in mass shootings.
• Joseph Clark can be reached at jclark@washingtontimes.com.
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