Biden Tackles Policing and Guns in State Of The Union Address

President Joe Biden, in the face of a divided Congress with a new Republican House majority, used his State of the Union address to remind Americans of some of his administration’s achievements and stressed key issues like job creation, health care and social security. 

In a likely re-election pitch to Americans, the president spent most of his speech calling for unity between Democrats and Republicans but did not avoid taking jabs at certain unpopular Republican policies, including a recent dust-up between the president and some rowdy Republican members of Congress regarding social security. 

“You know, we’re often told that Democrats and Republicans can’t work together,” Biden said. “But over these past two years, we proved the cynics and the naysayers wrong. Yes, we disagreed plenty. And yes, there were times when Democrats had to go it alone. But time and again, Democrats and Republicans came together.”

During his remarks, President Biden celebrated the passing of the Bipartisan Safer Communities act last year, and connected the fight for increased gun control in the U.S. to a recent incident in California where a 26-year-old man disarmed a mass shooter. 

Brandon Tsay wrestled a semi-automatic pistol away from a gunman at his family’s dance studio in Alhambra, California after the gunman had shot and killed 11 others at a nearby studio, preventing a second mass shooting.

“He saved lives,” Biden said of Tsay. “It’s time we do the same as well.” 

Biden used the story of Tsay and the Alhambra shooter to make the case for a new federal assault weapon ban. 

“I led the fight to ban [assault weapons] in 1994. In the 10 years the ban was law, mass shootings went down,” Biden said, referring to an assault weapons ban congress passed that expired in 2004 under Republican leadership. “After Republicans let it expire, mass shootings tripled. Let’s finish the job and ban assault weapons again.” 

Biden also condemned the police killing of 29-year-old Tyre Nichols, and called for police accountability while the parents of Tyre Nichols sat in the First Lady’s box as invited guests. 

He attempted to strike a delicate balance, sandwiching his calls for accountability and reform with repeated statements of respect and support for the police. 

“I know most cops are good, decent people,” Biden said. “They risk their lives every time they put on that shield. But what happened to Tyre in Memphis happens too often.” 

Biden did not directly implore legislators to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act in his speech, but the White House released a statement calling on congress to pass it. 

Biden pointed to an executive order he signed in May that banned chokeholds, restricted no-knock warrants, and implemented what he said were “other key elements of the George Floyd Act” for federal law enforcement. 

“There are no words to describe the heartbreak and grief of losing a child,” Biden said. “But imagine what it’s like to lose a child at the hands of the law. Imagine having to worry whether your son or daughter will come home from walking down the street or playing in the park or just driving their car.”

Biden, who never supported the “defund the police” campaign popular with some Democrats, walked a fine line between voicing his support for police officers across the country and calling for change.

Biden positioned his call for higher standards and increased training for law enforcement as a way for Americans to help police in their collective mission to “keep everyone safe.” 

Biden said he never had to “have the talk” with his children about how to behave during a traffic stop like so many Black and Brown families have had with theirs, and invoked the fourteenth amendment in his remarks, calling the promise of equal protection under the law a covenant all Americans share. 

The president’s “Safe America Plan,” accounting for $37 billion in the 2023 budget dedicated to supporting law enforcement and crime prevention, aims to fund a number of goals Biden mentioned during his speech. 

Those goals include increasing the number of first responders and mental health professionals across the U.S., increasing resources available for departments to address violent crime, and investing in community intervention programs, ‘effective accountable policing’ and crime prevention broadly. 

Among other things, the plan would fund 100,000 additional officers dedicated to ‘accountable community policing’ through the COPS Hiring Program. It also allocates $15 billion to a new grant program announced in August called Accelerating Justice System Reform, intended to reduce unnecessary incarceration and increase alternative intervention models for situations where the police do not need to respond to a drug or mental health related crisis. 

Biden said we must hold law enforcement accountable when they violate the public’s trust and recounted a conversation he had with RowVaughn Wells, Tyre Nichols’ mother, where she told him that the belief something good will come in the wake of her son’s death helps give her the strength to carry on. 

“Let’s commit ourselves to make the words of Tyre’s mother come true,” Biden said. “Something good must come from this.”