In a press briefing on March 29, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre would neither confirm nor deny that President Joe Biden’s proposed “assault weapons” ban could involve gun confiscation.
The comments came two days after a 28-year-old woman shot and killed three children and three adults at The Covenant School, a private Christian school in Nashville, Tennessee, before being shot and killed by police.
Jean-Pierre avoided directly answering a question about whether Biden supported the mandatory confiscation of millions of Americans’ firearms if Congress passes a bill calling for a ban on semiautomatic rifles.
“Does the president support not just banning the sale and the manufacture of semiautomatic weapons, but further than that, confiscation?” a reporter asked.
“Let me just be very clear, what we’re talking about. AR-15s, this assault weapons ban, they are weapons of war,” she said.
The AR-15 sporting rifle is the semiautomatic version of the M-16 and M-4 rifles used by the U.S. military and is one of the most widely owned civilian firearms in America.
“As you know, we all know how government works,” the press secretary added. “There’s only so much that he can do, and so now it’s time for Congress to do the work. And he’s happy to sign—once that happens, he’s happy to sign that legislation that says, ‘OK, we’re going to remove assault weapons. We’re going have an assault weapons ban.’”
The same reporter then reminded her about the concerns of Republican lawmakers who said that there were tens of millions of semiautomatic rifles in homes throughout the United States, making them almost impossible to ban.
“It’s unacceptable that Republicans are saying there is nothing that we can do,” she said, and added that “Republicans in Congress need to look in the mirror.”
White House Blames Republicans
In a March 28 appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Jean-Pierre made similar statements and accused Republicans of hindering Democrats’ attempts to pass an “assault weapons ban,” despite the fact that Democrats controlled the White House and both houses of Congress for two years.
“What I will say to Republicans in Congress is, what are you going to say to these parents? What are you going to say to these family members? … We cannot sit around to allow this anymore,” she said.
Jean-Pierre then said Biden has taken more executive action on gun laws than any president before him.
In a March 28 speech in Durham, North Carolina, Biden renewed his calls for Congress to ban so-called “assault weapons.”
“I’m a Second Amendment guy. … Everybody thinks somehow the Second Amendment is absolute! You’re not allowed to go out and own an automatic weapon. You’re not allowed to own a machine gun. You’re not allowed to own a flamethrower!” Biden said.
Republicans have pushed back on the press secretary’s attacks.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) slammed Jean-Pierre for placing blame on Republican lawmakers for the shooting in Nashville.
“It doesn’t get much lower than blaming Republicans in Congress for a transgender killer who targeted a Christian school. Shameful,” said Cotton in a tweet.
