Joe Biden, facing a backlash from young voters over the war in Gaza, sought to rally support around the issue of gun safety just hours after his son Hunter was convicted of lying about his drug use to illegally buy a firearm. Contrasting his record with election rival Donald Trump, the US president brought an audience that included many students to its feet at the Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund’s annual Gun Sense University conference in Washington on Tuesday, the Guardian reports. His speech made no mention of Hunter Biden’s conviction in Delaware earlier in the day on three felony counts relating to buying a handgun while being a user of crack cocaine. The conference, which brings together Moms Demand Action and Students Demand Action volunteers and survivors of gun violence from all 50 states, served as a show of strength for Biden at a time when his position looks fragile in opinion polls.
Biden received loud acclaim when he reminded the audience that in June 2022 he signed the most significant federal bipartisan gun-safety legislation in nearly 30 years; on Wednesday, the justice department announced it had charged more than 500 defendants under the new law. There was another big cheer when Biden noted his creation last September of the first White House office of gun violence to coordinate a nationwide effort to reduce gun violence, “overseen by my incredible vice-president”. But perhaps the most enthusiastic response came to the president’s renewed call for a ban on assault weapons, sparking prolonged cheering, whooping and chants of “Four more years!” Biden asked: “Who in God’s name needs a magazine which can hold 200 [bullets]?” Someone shouted: “Nobody!” Biden replied: “Nobody. That’s right.” He added: “They’re weapons of war and, by the way, it’s time we establish universal background checks.” Biden asserted that the country’s murder rate saw the highest increase on record in the year before he came to the presidency. But last year saw the largest drop in murder rates in history, he added.