Biden tightens some gun controls, says much more needed

WASHINGTON >> President Joe Biden, in his first gun control measures since taking office, announced a half-dozen executive actions Thursday aimed at addressing a proliferation of gun violence across the nation that he called an “epidemic and an international embarrassment.”

“The idea that we have so many people dying every single day from gun violence in America is a blemish on our character as a nation,” Biden said during remarks at the White House.

He announced he is tightening regulations for buyers of “ghost guns” — homemade firearms that usually are assembled from parts and often lack serial numbers used to trace them. Also, a proposed rule, expected within 60 days, will tighten regulations on pistol-stabilizing braces like the one used in Boulder, Colorado, in a shooting last month that left 10 dead.

On Thursday, family members whose children were killed at the Sandy Hook, Connecticut, school massacre in 2012 and the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in 2018 attended the hearing. Biden thanked them for attending, saying he understood it would remind them of the awful days when they got the calls.

He assured them, “We’re absolutely determined to make change.”

Biden’s Thursday announcement delivers on a pledge the president made last month to take what he termed immediate “common-sense steps” to address gun violence, after a series of mass shootings drew renewed attention to the issue. His announcement came the same day as yet another, this one in South Carolina, where five people were killed.

Biden emphasized the scope of the problem: Between the mass killings in Atlanta massage businesses and the Colorado grocery store shooting last month, there were more than 850 additional shootings that killed 250 and injured 500 in the U.S., he said.

But Thursday’s announcement underscores the limitations of Biden’s executive power to act on guns. His orders tighten regulations on homemade guns and provide more resources for gun-violence prevention but fall far short of the sweeping guncontrol agenda he laid out on the campaign trail.

Indeed, Biden again urged Congress to act, calling on the Senate to take up House-passed measures closing background check loopholes. He also said Congress should pass the Violence Against Women Act, eliminate legal exemptions for gun manufacturers and ban assault weapons and high capacity magazines. Biden said

“This is not a partisan issue among the American people,” Biden insisted. site where the senior housing project is planned, having an impact on homes in the Aronomink subdivision.

He noted the developers had said the project will have an underground retention tank to improve stormwater flow but was shut down after the lawyer for the developer said stormwater is a subject for the land development process, not a conditional use hearing.

Robert Vogt of Cherokee Circle, who said he dealt with stormwater issues for decades, got the same answer when he said the current stormwater plan would be “burdensome” on existing properties.

He was told a formal stormwater plan has not yet been submitted to the township.

But that didn’t stop John Alejnikov, an engineer for the developer, telling the supervisors last month that the underground stormwater management system planned for the project will mean when construction is complete, there will be less runoff from the site than there is now.

The concerns raised Tuesday echoed some raised last month on the same subject.

Resident Andrea Straka said last month that during heavy rainfalls she can see the water running down toward her Cherokee Circle home and neighbors

While Biden asserted that he’s “willing to work with anyone to get it done,” gun control measures face slim prospects in an evenly divided Senate, where Republicans remain near-unified against most proposals.

have had flooding problems in basements and yards, “turning them into swamps and making them unusable.”

Proposed by Senior Housing Development LLC, the project complies with the retail business zoning for the site, which requires it first to obtain conditional use approval from the board of supervisors.

The township planning commission has recommended the project receive the conditional use permit from the supervisors.

The project has already obtained four variances from the township’s zoning hearing board, including an allowance to clear more vegetation that the ordinance allows, and to have less parking than the ordinance requires.

If the conditional use is approved, the project must still go through the land development process before the township planning commission before coming back to the supervisors for final approval.

It is during the land development process that formal stormwater designs will be submitted to the township and where resident concerns about the issue should be raised, said Township Solicitor Mike McGrory.

The board adjourned the hearing without taking a vote. McGrory told the supervisors they legally have 45 days to make a decision.

This article first appeared as a post in The Digital Notebook blog.

ANDREW HARNIK - THE AP