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WASHINGTON, May 30 (AP) \u2014 President Joe Biden said Monday that the \u201cSecond Amendment was never absolute\u201d and that, after the Texas elementary school shooting, there may be some bipartisan support to tighten restrictions on the kind of high-powered weapons used by the gunman.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think things have gotten so bad that everybody\u2019s getting more rational, at least that\u2019s my hope,\u201d Biden told reporters on the White House lawn after returning to Washington.<\/p>\n
His comments came a day after the president traveled to the shattered Texas community of Uvalde, mourning privately for three-plus hours with anguished families grieving for the 19 children and two teachers who died in the shooting. Faced with chants of \u201cdo something\u201d as he departed a church service, Biden pledged: \u201cWe will.\u201d<\/p>\n
As he arrived from Delaware for Memorial Day events, Biden was asked if he\u2019s now more motivated to see new federal limits imposed on firearms.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been pretty motivated all along,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m going to continue to push and we\u2019ll see how this goes.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Congress, a bipartisan group of senators talked over the weekend to see if they could reach even a modest compromise on gun legislation after a decade of mostly failed efforts. That included encouraging state \u201cred flag\u201d laws to keep guns away from those with mental health problems.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Second Amendment was never absolute,\u201d Biden said. \u201cYou couldn\u2019t buy a cannon when the Second Amendment was passed. You couldn\u2019t go out and buy a lot of weapons.\u201d<\/p>\n
There is nowhere near enough support from congressional Republicans for broader gun measures popular with the public \u2014 like a new ban on assault-type weapons or universal background checks on gun purchases. Still, Democratic advocates hope meaningful measures could still pass.<\/p>\n
Biden said he\u2019d not spoken to Republicans on the issue \u201cbut my guess is … they\u2019re going to have to take a hard look.\u201d<\/p>\n
The president also said \u201cit makes no sense to be able to purchase something that can fire up to 300 rounds\u201d and added, \u201cThe idea of these high powered weapons, there\u2019s simply no rational basis for it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Biden said he had taken some executive actions on guns \u201cbut I can\u2019t outlaw a weapon\u201d and can\u2019t \u201cchange the background checks.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said he didn\u2019t know where congressional negotiations stand, but \u201cthere\u2019s realization on the part of rational Republicans\u201d that \u201dwe can\u2019t keep repeating ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n
The president and first lady Jill Biden, whose veteran son Beau died of brain tumor in 2015, attended church near their home in Delaware and visited their son\u2019s grave early Monday morning.<\/p>\n
After flying back to the White House, they hosted a Memorial Day breakfast in the East Room with 130 or so members of veteran organizations, military family groups and senior Defense Department and other administration officials.<\/p>\n
The couple was later joined by Vice President Kamala Harris, second gentleman Doug Emhoff, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at Arlington National Cemetery to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Solider.<\/p>\n
Standing at attention under a cloudless sky in the late-May heat, Biden saluted as taps played, after laying the wreath of red and white roses wrapped in red, white and blue ribbon in front of the tomb.<\/p>\n
Biden was set to deliver remarks honoring servicemembers before returning to the White House, where he was to join families in the planting of a magnolia tree on the White House South Lawn in honor of the fallen.<\/p>\n
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WASHINGTON, May 30 (AP) \u2014 President Joe Biden said Monday that the \u201cSecond Amendment was never absolute\u201d and that, after the Texas elementary school shooting, there may be some bipartisan support to tighten restrictions on the kind of high-powered weapons used by the gunman. \u201cI think things have gotten so bad that everybody\u2019s getting more […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-191898","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191898\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}