President Joe Biden on Friday will visit Maine, where a gunman killed 18 people and wounded more than a dozen others in the latest mass shooting to rock the nation.
The president and first lady Jill Biden will travel to Lewiston, Maine, where they will meet with families of the victims, community members and first responders, according to a White House statement.
Biden in the wake of the Maine shooting renewed his call for an assault-weapons ban and other limits on firearms. But those measures have virtually no chance of passage with Republicans in control of the House and a slim Democratic majority in the Senate. Biden has urged voters to elect more lawmakers who support stricter gun laws.
The shooter, Robert Card, was accused of opening fire at a bowling alley and bar with a military-style rifle in Maine’s second-largest city, before fleeing from the scene. A two-day manhunt ended when Card, a U.S. Army reservist and firearms instructor, was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot.
U.S. gun violence has been an intractable problem that Biden and his predecessors have struggled to tackle. There have been 37 mass killings in the U.S. this year, according to a database maintained by the Associated Press and USA Today in partnership with Northeastern University.
When Democrats controlled both chambers of Congress last year, the president signed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the first major federal gun-control law in 30 years. The measure tightened background checks, funded state red-flag laws and ramped up criminal penalties for gun trafficking.
Everytown for Gun Safety, which advocates for gun-safety measures, is backed by Michael Bloomberg, the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News.
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