Joe Biden asks Jacinda Ardern for advice on extremist gun violence

The US President referred to the 2019 Christchurch slaying of 51 people in a mass shooting targeting Muslims.

Jacinda Ardern meets Joe Biden in the Oval Office on Tuesday. Picture: AFP

Joe Biden has asked Jacinda Ardern for advice after the latest US mass shooting but the White House also acknowledged the limitations it faced on gun control compared with its close allies.

Meeting in the Oval Office with the New Zealand Prime Minister, the US President referred to the 2019 Christchurch slaying of 51 people in mass shootings targeting Muslims. The bloodshed prompted New Zealand to ban military-style rifles and institute a successful gun buy-back.

“We need your guidance,” Mr Biden said, referring to the broad US-New Zealand partnership, but particularly on what he called a “global effort to counter violence and extremism online”.

“I want to work with you on that effort,” he said.

Mr Biden, who visited the Texan town of Uvalde on Sunday to mourn the deaths of 19 children and two teachers slain by a gunman using an assault-style rifle, said there was an “awful lot of suffering” and “much of it is preventable”. Less than two weeks earlier, Mr Biden had visited the site in New York state of another mass shooting, this time targeting African-Americans.

But with the US awash in privately held firearms and the right to own weapons enshrined in the constitution, the Democrat faces an uphill struggle to get even the most modest new restrictions approved in congress. There is little chance of banning assault-style semi-automatic rifles like the AR-15, a model used in the Texas and New York shootings yet also hugely popular among ordinary Americans for its ease of use and sleek, military-style look.

Mr Biden supports an assault weapons ban but there are so far not enough Republicans in the evenly split Senate to get a working majority. Even his potentially less controversial proposal for increased background checks on gun purchasers may sink in the Senate.

The political resistance to tampering with access to firearms contrasts with not only New Zealand but neighbouring Canada. There, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Monday proposed banning sales of handguns.

Nothing similar can be expected in the US, press secretary Kar­ine Jean-Pierre said on Tuesday.

Mr Biden “does not support a ban on the sale of all handguns,” she underlined. “We’ll leave it up to other countries to set their ­polices on gun ownerships.”

AFP