President Biden on Wednesday said that he’s preparing to announce new restrictions on guns in response to recent mass shootings.
Biden said at a White House event, “l’ll be talking with you about that I think the day after tomorrow,” meaning on Friday.
One executive order is expected to require background checks for “ghost guns” that can be manufactured at home, Politico reported. There may be additional orders.
Recent reports said the White House was studying a possible order to require that local cops be notified if someone fails an FBI background check to buy a gun from a registered dealer.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was coy about details during her daily press briefing on Wednesday.
“I can convey that I expect the president will have more to say tomorrow,” Psaki said.
Asked to confirm one order would impact ghost guns, Psaki said, “I’m just not going to preview more from here. I expect we’ll have more — we will probably do a background briefing call for all of you later today.”
As of late Wednesday afternoon, the White House had not distributed dial-in information for a background press call.
The reported orders under consideration aren’t necessarily applicable to the pair of high-profile mass shootings last month, including the massacre of 10 people at a Boulder, Colo., grocery store and the murder of eight at Atlanta-area massage parlors.
Suspected Atlanta shooter Robert Long, 21, reportedly bought a semiautomatic pistol from a dealer after passing a background check on the day of the killings. Suspected Boulder grocery store gunman Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, also 21, bought a Ruger AR-556 pistol after passing a background check six days before the attack.
Biden called for gun control legislation last month in response to those shootings, but significant reforms are unlikely to pass the evenly divided Senate, where 60 votes generally are needed to pass bills.
Thirty-five Senate Democrats introduced legislation last month to ban “assault weapons” including popular semi-automatic guns such as AR-15-style rifles. But it’s not likely to pass. Bipartisan legislation previously failed to expand mandatory background checks to cover private gun transfers among non-dealers.