Biden Responds to Bipartisan Gun Deal: ‘It Does Not Do Everything That I Think is Needed’

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President Joe Biden responded on Sunday to the bipartisan deal on a set of gun safety measures reached by 20 senators.

Biden said the bill “does not do everything that I think is needed, but it reflects important steps in the right direction.”

The bipartisan proposal, led by Senators Chris Murphy (D-CT), Krysten Sinema (D-AZ), Thom Tillis (R-NC) and  John Cornyn (R-TX), would enhance background checks for people under 21 and increase funding for mental health and school safety.

In his statement, Biden thanked the senators who reached the agreement and said he would sign it as soon as it comes to his desk:

I want to thank Senator Chris Murphy and the members of his bipartisan group—especially Senators Cornyn, Sinema, and Tillis—for their tireless work to produce this proposal. Obviously, it does not do everything that I think is needed, but it reflects important steps in the right direction, and would be the most significant gun safety legislation to pass Congress in decades. With bipartisan support, there are no excuses for delay, and no reason why it should not quickly move through the Senate and the House. Each day that passes, more children are killed in this country: the sooner it comes to my desk, the sooner I can sign it, and the sooner we can use these measures to save lives.

The deal falls short of the sprawling gun reform measures Biden has called for in the wake of several mass shootings, including the massacre at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas that left 19 children dead.

According to the Washington Post, however, “the gun provisions set out in the framework could, if enacted, represent the most significant new federal firearms restrictions enacted since the mid-1990s.”