During a White House press conference on Wednesday, Biden administration press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre used her response to leading questions from Fox correspondent Peter Doocy to rally for a ban on assault weapons. President Joe Biden and prominent Democrats continue to push for that policy even as Republican opposition and resistance to change threaten to perhaps facilitate discouragement. Lives simply remain at stake.
Doocy, who has covered the White House for Fox throughout Biden’s time as president, asked Jean-Pierre about potential meetings between the president and families of the victims of the recent school shooting at The Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee, which is a private Christian institution where three young children and three adults were killed. Some on the Right have tried to cast what happened there as specifically targeting Christians. While the right-wing victim complex remains odd, whatever might propel these people into getting out of the way of the potentially lifesaving progress people want could nonetheless work!
Doocy seemed to be trying to characterize relevant circumstances as involving some meaningful distinction between the White House’s handling of activism versus the shooting’s victims, since Doocy noted a planned meeting with three state legislators in Tennessee who’d participated in protests for gun control from the floor of the state House and faced votes on their potential expulsions, which constituted extremely rare punishments.
“So, Monday, you’re going to have three of the lawmakers who protested after the Nashville Covenant School shooting. Have any of the victims or the victims’ families been invited to the White House?” Doocy asked on Wednesday. At the press secretary’s urging, he rephrased his question to describe the lawmakers as having “peacefully protested” amid his remarks.
Jean-Pierre replied she didn’t have anything to share about such a meeting. After Doocy asked about why no such details were available, as though there was a (presumably criticism-worthy) explanation, Jean-Pierre added as follows: “What I can say to you right now is that the President is focused on getting things done. He’s focused on making sure that we are protecting our communities, that we’re protecting our schools, that we’re protecting our churches, we’re protecting our grocery stores… We see what’s happening in our schools. And that’s why he’s bringing these legislators here to have that conversation and to see what else can be done and to highlight that. That’s what the President is using the bully pulpit for. That’s why he continues to put pressure on Congress to get things done, make sure that they’re showing some courage — Republicans in Congress — to make sure that we’re banning assault weapons. And so, we cannot have weapons of war in our streets. We cannot have weapons of war in our schools.”
