Vice President Joe Biden, who has been the White House's point man on gun legislation since the December slayings in Newtown, Connecticut,
told another group Monday what he said last week about a possible new attempt to pass background checks and possibly other gun legislation this year: It will have to wait until after immigration reform has made some progress. That probably means near the end of the summer.
Last week, Biden spoke with law enforcement officers, telling them that, despite the defeat of most gun legislation in the Senate April 17, he is continuing to push for expanded background checks on firearms purchases and for a federal law against gun trafficking. He was also reported to have said that any new vote would have to wait until after debates on immigration reform.
To some 20 representatives of faith-based organizations Monday, Biden again discussed his plans, taking note once again, according to three of those who attended, that making headway on fixing immigration law comes first:
“He doesn’t think it will come back before they’ve made some pretty good steps on immigration,” said Sister Marjorie Clark, a lobbyist for Network, the Catholic social justice organization. “He said, ‘I don’t think it will happen before immigration but it will come back.’”
Biden reportedly said that a study should undertaken to look at the impact that violence in video games has on developing brains. And he told Franklin Graham, son of the Rev. Billy Graham, that nothing would legally prevent the government from taxing media companies that present violent images.
Politico's Reid J. Epstein noted that five of representatives at the meeting said the vice president specifically asked that his words be kept "off the record":
“He basically just said in general that these stakeholder meetings that if you put words into the vice president’s mouth it sometimes comes out wrong and gets misquoted,” said Shantha Alonso, the director of the poverty program at the National Council of Churches.
“He said it was off the record,” Clark said. “What he did say was that he had had a meeting with another group and at some point in the past and he doesn’t like being misquoted and he felt that stuff was said that wasn’t accurate and he trusted that that wouldn’t happen again.”
Oopsy.