Joe Biden failed to deliver on promise to ban assault weapons

Although President Joe Biden shepherded the first major gun safety bill in nearly 30 years through Congress, he failed to ban assault weapons and high capacity magazines. 

Biden made gun control a key piece of his agenda during the 2020 campaign and he promised to ban assault weapons, building on the 10-year ban under the 1994 crime bill, which Biden co-sponsored as a U.S. senator from Delaware.

Democrats introduced legislation in both chambers of Congress to make it illegal for a person to "import, sell, manufacture, transfer, or possess, in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce, a semiautomatic assault weapon." The bill included a definition of "semiautomatic assault weapon," which generally refers to a firearm that's able to fire one shot per trigger pull in quick succession. 

The 2023 version of the House bill attracted 208 Democratic co-sponsors; the Senate bill attracted 45 Democratic co-sponsors. In both cases, the votes of the co-sponsors alone would not be enough to pass the bills if all Republicans opposed them. 

In June 2022, a month after mass shootings at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, and a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, Biden signed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which passed Congress with all Democrats and some Republicans voting in favor.

The law introduced new federal crimes for firearm trafficking and straw purchasing — purchasing a firearm for someone else. It prohibited people convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence in a dating relationship from owning a gun, narrowing what's known as the "boyfriend loophole." 

The law mandated background checks for gun purchasers younger than 21. It also gave states financial incentives to pass "red flag" laws, which make it easier for courts to confiscate firearms from people who threaten themselves or others. The law funded violence intervention programs, mental health services and school safety programs.

Biden issued an executive order in March 2023 that expanded some gun safety measures. It directed Biden's Cabinet to increase public awareness about firearm crimes and improve investigation techniques and broadened the use of background checks.

Neither the legislation nor the executive order banned the sale and manufacture of assault weapons as Biden promised, though, and they didn't significantly limit their sales. We rate this Promise Broken.