Biden to sign executive order on gun background checks

President Biden was set Tuesday to announce a multi-pronged gun-safety executive order aimed at increasing the enforcement of America’s background check laws, and to call for a report on the marketing of guns to children, the White House said.

The order, limited in its scope, would direct Biden’s cabinet to improve public awareness around so-called red-flag laws, and to accelerate law enforcement’s reporting of ballistics data to speed the capture of shooters, according to the Biden administration.

Biden is also pushing the Federal Trade Commission to complete an analysis of gun manufacturers’ efforts to market guns to children, the White House said.

One manufacturer, WEE 1 Tactical and Schmid Tool, has been branding a so-called JR-15 rifle for children. Many mass shootings in recent years have been carried out by young men.

Biden planned to announce his moves during a visit to Monterey Park, Calif., the site of a dreadful January dance club shooting that left 11 dead. Biden was scheduled to speak at a Boys & Girls Club in the Los Angeles-area city in the afternoon.

“President Biden will do everything he can to reduce gun violence and save lives,” the White House said in a statement. “That is why, over the past two years, President Biden has taken more executive action to reduce gun violence than any other president at this point in their presidency.”

Last year, Congress passed America’s most significant gun control law in three decades, a bipartisan response to a barrage of mass shootings, including the racist tragedy in Buffalo and the massacre of children in Uvalde, Texas.

Biden has urged lawmakers to go further, and has pushed a national assault weapons ban. His calls appear unlikely to be answered.