President Biden’s reelection campaign released a new ad highlighting his administration’s gun violence prevention efforts on Saturday, the day after the Supreme Court struck down a Trump-era bump stock ban.
In 30-second adBiden criticized former President Trump over Friday’s conservative-leaning Supreme Court decision, The Hill reported.
The Biden administration defended the regulation in the Supreme Court, which was first enacted by the Trump administration in response to the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting and bans devices that turn semi-automatic rifles into rifles capable of firing hundreds of rounds per minute.
“When Trump was president, kids were shot in their classrooms, innocent people were killed in their churches and massacres were committed at concerts — and he did nothing,” Biden said in the ad, arguing that the former president has often sided with the National Rifle Association.
They also noted that Biden has taken steps to expand background checks and established the Office of Gun Violence Prevention late last year.
“You and your family deserve to be safe, and I’m going to fight with all my might to keep you safe,” Biden said in the ad.
The ad also points out that murder rates have fallen under Biden’s administration, with murders down about 20 percent in more than 200 cities across the U.S., according to an April analysis by 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 who has a proven track record of successfully taking on the gun lobby and who will ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines,” Biden communications director Michael Tyler said in a statement. “And that’s President Biden.”
In a 6-3 decision written by conservative Justice Clarence Thomas on Friday, the court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, finding that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives’ (ATF) rules classifying bump-stocked firearms as machine guns went too far in the law. Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor fired back at Thomas in a scathing dissent.
But Justice Samuel Alito added that Congress still has the power to rule on the bans on a case-by-case basis. Biden, in response to the court’s ruling, again urged Congress to do so.
“Congress must ban bump stocks, pass an assault weapons ban, and take additional steps to save lives,” he said. I wrote on Friday On social media platform X, you can send a message saying, “Send the invoice to my desk and I’ll sign it right away.”
