Joe
Biden's call for an assault weapons ban and a wave of other gun control measures adds a daunting new policy challenge to a progressive agenda that is already shaping up as the most ambitious by a Democratic president for decades. The President has already passed a $1.9 trillion Covid rescue plan that reflects the reality that his administration will be mostly defined by his ability to conquer the pandemic that has killed more than half a million Americans. What comes next could be even bigger, as CNN reported on Monday that the White House is already preparing a $3 trillion jobs and infrastructure proposal, the Democratic-led House has sent the Senate a massive election bill and the President also envisages big climate change legislation.
Biden eulogized the victims of the mass shooting at a Boulder, Colorado, supermarket at the White House on Tuesday at a hastily arranged event, and took the chance to add more to his administration's already-full plate.
"I don't need to wait another minute, let alone an hour, to take common-sense steps that will save the lives in the future, and to urge my colleagues in the House and Senate to act," Biden said.
"We can ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines in this country once again. I got that done when I was a senator. It passed. It was the law for the longest time. And it brought down these mass killings. We should do it again."
The remarks before Biden headed off to Ohio to tout his Covid rescue plan and mark Obamacare's 11th anniversary reflected the sudden crises that erupt and can disrupt the best-laid plans of any President.
The mass shooting in Colorado -- the seventh in seven days in the United States, by CNN's count -- came while his administration struggles to control a flood of child migrants at the border, which his team won't call a crisis, amid a foreign policy showdown between Biden and two major nuclear powers, Russia and China.
But White House senior adviser Cedric Richmond told CNN on Tuesday night that the President would seek to mobilize public opinion to change the political dynamics in Washington.
"I think that the will of the people ... they will create the demand. We will help lead that and we will help to pass it," Richmond told CNN's Pamela Brown on "The Situation Room."
"The President feels very strongly that he is not going to sit back and watch people get mowed down in the streets without trying."
