WATCH LIVE: Biden speaks on gun violence, signs new executive order, in Monterey Park, California
PBS NewsHourDec 23, 2022
The Facts
US Pres. Biden on Tuesday signed an executive order intended to increase background checks for gun buyers, promote safer storage of firearms, and encourage law enforcement agencies to enforce last summer’s bipartisan gun control law to the best of their abilities.
Biden signed the order in Monterey Park, Calif. — the site of a mass shooting in January.
The Spin
Democratic narrative
The president is determined to make the US safer, and Republicans who refuse to help pass popular, common sense gun safety laws — universal background checks, a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, and repeal of immunity for gun manufacturers from liability — have left him no choice but to sign landmark orders like this one. President Biden will continue to do everything in his power to reduce America’s gun deaths count.
Republican narrative
America has a crime problem, and Biden and the Democrats’ way of distracting from their inability to corral it is by signing orders that infringe on the Second Amendment rights of lawful gun owners. This war on gun rights has to stop, and attention has to be paid to changing the laws that are letting criminals run rampant across the country.
