In the nearly nine months since U.S. President Joe Biden signed into law a series of gun safety measures last summer, scores of Americans have been killed or wounded in mass shootings across the country: in the Illinois suburbs, at a Virginia university, in an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado and at a dance studio in this Los Angeles suburb.
Throughout that time, Biden has vowed to seek passage of a new ban on assault weapons "come hell or high water.” But the president and his aides have acknowledged there is virtually no chance of that happening in a Congress that remains deeply divided over how to confront the slaughter of its citizens in repeated spasms of gun-related violence.
So Biden traveled Tuesday to Monterey Park, where a gunman killed 11 people in January during Lunar New Year festivities at Star Ballroom Dance Studio, and announced a handful of steps designed to improve enforcement of existing laws that have so far failed to prevent mass shootings in one American community after another.