Biden campaign unveils gun control ad after Supreme Court invalidates bump stock ban

15/06/2024

President Biden’s reelection campaign dropped a new ad Saturday highlighting his administration’s work on gun violence prevention, just a day after the Supreme Court invalidated the Trump-era prohibition on bump stocks.

In the 30-second ad, shared with The Hill, Biden blames former President Trump for the conservative-leaning court’s decision on Friday.

The Biden administration-has defended the regulation, which banned the device that converts semi-automatic weapons to ones capable of firing hundreds of rounds per minute, in front of the high court after the Trump administration first implemented it in the wake of the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting.

“When Trump was president— children gunned down in classrooms, innocent people killed in church and massacred at a concert. Still, Trump did nothing,” Biden said in the ad, arguing that the former president has often sided with the National Rifle Association.

It also notes that Biden has taken steps to expand background checks and, late last year, established the Office of Gun Violence Prevention.

“You and your family deserve to be safe and I’m going to fight like hell to see to it that you are,” Biden said in the ad.

The advertisement also notes that murder rates are down under the Biden administration. Murders are down about 20 percent in more than 200 cities across the U.S., according to an analysis in April from criminal justice consulting firm AH Analytics.

“If you care about the gun violence crisis in this country, there is only one candidate in this race with a proven record of successfully taking on the gun lobby and only one candidate who will ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines,” Biden communications director Michael Tyler said in a statement. “That’s President Biden.”

In a 6-3 decision Friday, authored by conservative Justice Clarence Thomas, the court said the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF)’s rule classifying firearms with bump stocks as machine guns stretched the law too far — ruling in favor of the challenger. Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor hit back at Thomas in a scathing dissent.

Justice Samuel Alito, however, added that Congress still had to ability to rule separately on the ban. Biden, responding to the court decision, reupped his push on Congress to do just that.

Congress must ban bump stocks, pass an assault weapon ban, and take additional action to save lives,” he wrote Friday on social media platform X. “Send a bill to my desk. I will sign it immediately.”

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