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| Biden Frustrated With Congress Over Lack of Action on Assault Weapons Ban |
President Biden speaks out against owning military-style guns in response to the latest school shooting incident in Nashville, where three nine-year-old children and three staff members were killed by a heavily armed former student. Biden expressed exasperation over the lack of action from Congress to end legal ownership of semi-automatic rifles like the popular AR-15, which are regularly used to carry out such massacres.
“The majority of the American people think having assault weapons is bizarre, it’s a crazy idea. They’re against that,” Biden told reporters at the White House. He noted that a ban on so-called assault weapons had been passed with his help back in the Bill Clinton administration in 1994, and that the last time such a ban was passed, violence went down. However, the ban expired after 10 years and was not renewed.
According to an ABC News/Washington Post poll conducted in February 2022, 47 percent of Americans support a ban on military-style guns, while 51 percent are opposed. Despite Biden's push for a ban, Republicans in Congress are fully opposed to the idea. There are over 24 million AR-15 style weapons in circulation in the United States, and around one in 20 American adults, or around 16 million people, are thought to own at least one AR-15 type rifle, according to a Washington Post/Ipsos survey of gun owners.
