President Barack Obama will unveil his gun-control priorities Wednesday, alongside a group of children that will evoke the 20 dead children killed in the Newtown, Conn., massacre.
“The president is committed to this … and he will push a series of proposals, and you will see that clearly when you hear from his tomorrow,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said. Even if only one child is saved, the government must act, he claimed.
The White House event will also include Vice President Joe Biden, who helped develop the package of gun-control measures. Biden is expected to use the gun-control issue to help him win the Democratic Party’s nomination race in 2016.
The White House event will be staged to maximize its political and emotional impact. Obama and Biden “will be joined by children from around the country who wrote to the president,” said Carney.
The Jan. 16 event will spur protest from gun-rights advocates, and complaints from GOP legislators, who are pressing the president to revive the economy by revamping the federal government’s high-spending programs.
Carney declined to describe the element of the White House plan, but said Obama “intends to take a comprehensive approach.”
Obama will call on Congress to ban “assault weapons” and “high-capacity magazine clips,” said Carney.
Magazines hold bullets for use in automatic or semi-automatic weapons.
Clips are small devices that allow people to quickly insert several bullets into a gun.
“No single thing we can do will eliminate this problem,” said Carney.
However, gun-rights activists and conservative are skeptical that Obama’s policies will curb gun violence.
In 2012, for example, more than 500 people were killed in the president’s adopted hometown of Chicago, whose Democratic government has imposed tight rules on gun ownership.
Carney did not suggest the president would include any of the anti-violence reforms urged by conservatives. Those reforms include greater effort to improve education via school-choice programs, more support for married parents seeking to raise children and a reform of gun rules to help law-abiding citizens carry self-defense weapons.
