President Joe Biden traveled to Lewiston, Maine, on Friday to grieve with the townspeople just one week after a gunman killed nearly 20 people.
The president’s visit followed similar trips to Uvalde, Texas; Buffalo, New York; and Monterey Park, California, since entering office in 2021.
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Joined by first lady Jill Biden on Friday, Biden spent time at both Schemengees Bar and Grille and the bowling alley Just-in-Time Recreation, the two sites of last week’s tragedy, and delivered remarks where he urged for a “consensus” on new gun control measures.
“As we mourn today in Maine, this tragedy opens painful, painful wounds all across the country. Too many Americans have lost loved ones or survived the trauma of gun violence,” Biden stated. “You know, I’ve been at this a long time. I know that consensus is the only way possible. This is about common sense, reasonable, responsible measures to protect our children, our families, our communities. Because regardless of our politics, this is about protecting our freedom to go to a bowling alley, a restaurant, school, church without being shot and killed.”
Against many expectations, Biden successfully ushered in the bipartisan Safer Communities Act gun reform bill in 2022, and the president has continued to call for new background checks, red flag laws, and reinstating the 1994 ban on assault-style weapons and expanded magazines.
Republican control of the House of Representatives significantly lowers the odds of Biden’s legislative asks coming to pass, but the Lewiston shootings have appeared to change some minds on the issue.
Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME), a previous opponent of reinstating the assault-style weapons ban, publicly changed his position on the topic following the events in Lewiston.
“The time has now come for me to take responsibility for this failure,” he said after this latest shooting. “Which is why I now call on the United States Congress to ban assault rifles like the one used by the sick perpetrator of this mass killing in my hometown of Lewiston, Maine.”
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre suggested earlier in the day that the administration will continue to lobby Congress to pass additional gun violence legislation, regardless of any “appetite” on Capitol Hill to do so.
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“We’ve been very clear what we think Congress should do,” she told reporters traveling with Biden to Maine. “This shouldn’t be a conversation. The conversation if they have an appetite should not be a question, really. It should not. They should be. They should be taking action, ‘they’ meaning Republicans in Congress. They should have the appetite to try to save a life.”
You can watch Biden’s remarks in full below.
