President Joe Biden’s choice to head the White House Domestic Policy Council called for a “permanent” ban on “assault weapons” during a June 2020 interview with two gun control advocacy groups.
Former national security advisor Susan Rice had appeared in a video with Moms Demand Action and Everytown For Gun Safety in which she supported then-candidate Joe Biden’s gun control agenda, including his plan to ban specific semi-automatic rifles, outlaw “high-capacity magazines” and eliminate liability protections for weapons manufacturers and sellers.
“[Biden has] taken on the NRA twice and won,” the former Obama official told Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action. “When he served with President Obama in the Obama-Biden administration, we implemented over two dozen reforms that put curbs on access to guns, but we need legislation, we need leadership in Joe Biden that understands and is passionate about these issues.”
Rice continued, backing “universal background checks, the enactment of a new violence against women act, with a permanent and comprehensive ‘assault weapons’ ban, and a ban on ‘high capacity magazines’ that will work to buy back those assault weapons that are out there and ensure that those that remain are fully registered.”
In the interview, Rice also said “we need to acknowledge” the issue of White Supremacist violence by labeling it domestic violence and “then to put in place the programs and efforts to attack it as we would foreign terrorist threats.”
“Far more Americans have been killed by domestic terrorists with White Supremacist leanings than by foreign terrorists in recent years on our soil. That should be a wake up call,” Rice asserted.
She called for federal agencies to prioritize “domestic terrorism, white nationalist terrorism,” adding that the role of Antifa in violence carried out in major cities during 2020 was “way overblown” and that the group “hasn’t been a big player.”
In December, Biden’s transition team announced Rice, a former Obama administration official, had been chosen for the top domestic policy position because of her experience with crisis management and interagency processes. Biden said Rice’s extensive knowledge of the federal government would be an asset to domestic policy.
“The roles they will take on are where the rubber meets the road — where competent and crisis-tested governance can make a meaningful difference in people’s lives, enhancing the dignity, equity, security, and prosperity of the day-to-day lives of Americans,” Biden said in a statement announcing the appointment.
