White House officials are not currently planning a major new push around gun safety reform in the wake of the deadly Nashville school shooting, three senior administration officials said.
But President Joe Biden and White House officials will continue to make one thing clear: It's up to Congress to act.
"It's really on Congress at this point," one senior administration official said. "The president has taken every executive action he can."
The White House says Biden has taken more than 20 executive actions on guns since taking office, including regulating the use of "ghost guns" and sales of stabilizing braces that effectively turn pistols into rifles. The list also includes funding measures meant to prevent gun violence.
He also signed a bipartisan measure in 2022 expanding background checks and providing federal funding for so-called "red flag laws," though it failed to ban any weapons and fell far short of what Biden and his party had advocated for, and polls show most Americans want to see.
White House officials are clear-eyed about the political realities in Congress, where Republicans in control of the House have rejected Biden's calls for an assault weapons ban. Even when both chambers of Congress were controlled by Democrats during the first two years of Biden's term, an assault weapon ban gained little traction, in part because of a 60-vote threshold necessary for passage.
As of now, White House officials are still mulling whether Biden will once again address the Nashville shooting at the top of his remarks this afternoon in Durham, North Carolina.