(NewsNation) — President Joe Biden traveled to Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania on Tuesday afternoon to deliver remarks on his Safer America Plan, specifically gun safety in America.
Biden’s plan moves to ban assault weapons, high-capacity magazines and ghost guns; require background checks for all gun sales with some exceptions; clear court backlogs and improve pretrial supervision of criminal cases; and invest in recruiting and training 100,000 additional police officers for community policing over the next five years.
The White House said Biden will use his Tuesday visit to call out Republicans for opposing his proposal to restore a ban on assault-style weapons. Both parties worked together in a rare effort to pass bipartisan gun safety legislation earlier this year after massacres in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas, but Biden has repeatedly said more needs to be done.
The president is expected to deliver remarks at Wilkes University at 3:15 p.m. local time. NewsNation will live stream the article in the player above.
Biden’s visit to the university was rescheduled from his original visit date in July after he tested positive for COVID-19.
Following his remarks in Wilkes-Barre, Biden is slated to deliver a prime-time address Thursday in Philadelphia. The president will speak on “the continued battle for the soul of the nation” while outside Independence Hall.
“He will talk about the progress we have made as a nation to protect our democracy, but how our rights and freedoms are still under attack,” the White House told The Associated Press. “And he will make clear who is fighting for those rights, fighting for those freedoms and fighting for our democracy.”
Biden’s speech at Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre comes as Democrats try to blunt Republican efforts to use concern about crime to their advantage in the midterms, which are two months away.
It’s a particularly fraught issue in Pennsylvania, a key swing state where a U.S. Senate seat and the governor’s office are up for grabs.