The NPR Politics Podcast - President Biden Makes Longshot Plea For Action On Gun Violence

Episode Date: June 3, 2022

Despite bipartisan efforts at a modest deal, Senate Republicans could filibuster any gun control measures that are brought to a vote. That would increase the amount of support needed to pass legislation and imperil its passage. In his speech, Biden noted that guns are the number one cause of death for American children.This episode: White House correspondent Tamara Keith, congressional correspondent Kelsey Snell, and national political correspondent Mara Liasson.Support the show and unlock sponsor-free listening with a subscription to The NPR Politics Podcast Plus. Learn more at plus.npr.org/politics Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Guns are the number one killer of children in the United States of America. The number one killer. More than car accidents. More than cancer. Over the last two decades, more school-age children have died from guns than on-duty police officers and active-duty military combined. Think about that. More kids than on-duty cops killed by guns. More kids than soldiers

killed by guns. For God's sake, how much more carnage are we willing to accept? It's 8.19 p.m. Eastern Time on Thursday, June 2nd, and this is the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Kelsey Snell. I cover Congress. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. What you just heard there was a bit of a primetime address that President Biden just concluded an address to the nation on gun violence. My fellow Americans, enough.

Enough. It's time for each of us to do our part. It's time to act for the children we've lost, the children we can save, for the nation we love. Let's hear the call and the cry. Let's meet the moment. Let us finally do something. He denounced the American epidemic of mass shootings and called on Congress to pass a number of specific gun control measures. And before we get into those specifics, I just want to ask both of you, what did you get from the speech? What do you think President Biden's goal was? And did he hit it? I think he hit it. He was channeling the outrage and exhaustion of Americans who don't understand why we have a mass shooting almost every week. He reframed the gun control debate as freedom to go to school safely. In other words, the right always frames it as freedom to carry weapons, carry assault weapons. He pointed out that one of the things that he wanted to do, which is to reinstate the assault weapons ban that existed for 10 years, when it expired in 2004, mass shootings tripled.

He pointed out that we already have gun control in this country. Machine guns are illegal. We're just arguing about what kind of guns people are going to be allowed to have. And he did mention a lot of specific things, assault weapons ban, background checks, red flag laws. But I also think that he made this a very political speech. He put this issue right into the midterm election argument. And he said, if Congress fails to do this, which they very well might, that voters are going to make their outrage central to their vote and take up this fight. So the president of the United States gives a lot of speeches, like almost every day he gives a

speech of some kind. But this one had a weight to it. And part of that is because it was at night. And part of it is that this striking scene that they set up in the East Room with this hallway behind him lined with candles as if to be a memorial to all of these lives lost. I mean, just so recently. the moment and the way he spoke was that, you know, as Mara said, he's taking on a lot of the words and framing of the right and bringing it back to them and flipping it around and asking people to confront what are the rights of people in this country. And that is a really powerful question to ask in a moment where when you have so many children who will never get the opportunity to experience those rights because they were killed in their classrooms. That is a moment that is impossible for people to look away from. And it is a moment that, you know, Biden's essentially asking people not to look away from. And Kelsey, when you use that phrase, you know, don't look away from it. He was quite graphic in his descriptions, talking about needing a DNA test to identify the children who were killed in the mass shooting in Uvalde because they were so destroyed by the bullets.

Their bodies were mutilated. They couldn't be recognized. Yeah. And he talked about killing fields and brought to mind moments that are visceral and human and deeply upsetting. And I think that, you know, that was Biden tapping into the way that many, many people feel. But, you know, Mara, you mentioned the fact that there's all this public polling in support of changing the gun laws in the country. But the other thing that you talk about a lot and that we have talked about is the structural issues between what the majority of voters say they want in polls and how they are represented in Congress where the laws that they are advocating for are being made. Right. Well, the Senate in particular, which is the sticking point here, is a minoritarian institution. It's 50-50 right now. And the 50 Democrats, I say this all the time, the 50 Democratic senators represent 44 million more people,

more voters, than the 50 Republican senators. It's just out of whack. Right. Like the majority of their voters want something that, you know, the majority of Democrats want, but they don't have a big enough majority to make it happen. Right. Because you need a super majority to pass anything in the United States Congress. As President Biden said tonight, you need 10 Republicans. And what he said is that the majority of Republicans don't even want these proposals to come up for a vote. That's what the filibuster is. It says this cannot even come up on the floor for a vote. And it's not clear right now whether anything will come up on the floor for a vote.

Kelsey, you have been watching congressional negotiations or Senate negotiations that are sort of at the early stages, bipartisan talks happening over Zoom. And their ambitions for what they might be able to do are quite different from what President Biden called for in this speech, right? They are modest interpretations of what Biden is asking for, modest at best. I think the way to think about it is if they were able to move forward with the things that they're currently talking about, so incentives for states to pass red flag laws, state-by-state standards for safe storage of guns, some sort of school safety component, some sort of mental health component, and potentially some minor changes to the background check laws, well, they would be in some ways addressing what Biden is asking for. They would be addressing minor portions of what Biden is asking for, but they could say that they, you know, they answered his call to some degree. But people who are watching this will likely point out that they are, you know, meeting Biden's call in maybe name but not spirit.

This does not go nearly as far as Biden is asking them to go. All right. We have to take a quick break. But when we're back. And I want to narrow in on something that President Biden has been calling for his entire presidency, his entire vice presidency. He's been calling for it for a really long time and he called for it again tonight. But in a way that seems to concede that he realizes it probably won't happen in the way he's asking for. And what I'm talking about here is an assault weapons ban. We need to ban assault weapons in high capacity magazines. And if we can't ban assault weapons, then we should raise the age to purchase them from 18 to 21. That really stood out to me because right there he was sort of giving them an out. But I guess my question to both of you is, is there a political path for even that other idea that is being discussed by a lot of people? shooting. There are focus groups of Trump voters that show unanimous agreement that the age at

which you're allowed to buy an assault weapon should be raised from 18 to 21. And we should say that the reason this is being discussed is that the shooters in both Buffalo and Texas were 18 years old and they were not 21. And in some places and for certain weapons, you have to be 21, like to buy a handgun, for instance. Right. And the thing that's important to remember is since the last time an effort like this failed in Congress, which I think was after Sandy Hook, the role that gun ownership plays

in the partisan identity of Republican base voters, especially white rural voters, has only become more important. In other words, it's no longer just the Second Amendment, the right to bear arms, it's the right to own and use an assault weapon. And that's what makes it even harder. Kelsey, is anyone in Congress talking about the 18 to 21 thing? I mean, anyone on the Senate side where they have to get 60 votes and have to get Republicans to go along? Certainly Democrats are and the House is planning to pass a bill next week that would do just that. But that's not something that can get enough votes can't get 60 in the Senate. I feel like a part of my job here is to come on the podcast and say, well, that can't get

60 votes in the Senate. And then, you know, it is a little bit of a broken record. But that is the case is there are a lot of things where it is something that a majority of Democrats want, but it just can't get through the Senate. Yeah. Because the Senate needs a supermajority to pass anything, a supermajority of senators who represent a minority of voters. A lot of these issues are issues that are being kind of pushed firmly into the midterms. And I'm thinking about things like abortion. You know, I'm thinking about election security. I'm thinking about guns. These are all things that motivate voters in a very, very intense way. And that means that Republicans have little incentive to give Democrats anything when they think that they're going to be able to use them as a wedge to win more seats and have greater control in the House and in the Senate.

But what's so interesting is Democrats feel the same way. Those two major culture war issues, abortion and guns, big majorities of Americans want to keep Roe, and huge majorities want to pass assault weapons bans or universal background checks. So Democrats think that these are the kinds of culture war issues that can work for them in the midterms. The problem is that when you list all of the issues, abortion and guns are still way down the list. Inflation is at the top. And it's unclear whether any of these other cultural issues are going to dislodge that and do what Biden said today, voters need to make their outrage on this central to their vote. I don't know if that's going to happen. Yeah. All right. Well, we're going to leave it there for today. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the

White House. I'm Kelsey Snell. I cover Congress. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.