Although President Joe Biden shepherded the first major gun safety bill in nearly 30 years through Congress, he failed to ban assault weapons and high capacity magazines. 

Biden made gun control a key piece of his agenda during the 2020 campaign and he promised to ban assault weapons, building on the 10-year ban under the 1994 crime bill, which Biden co-sponsored as a U.S. senator from Delaware.

Democrats introduced legislation in both chambers of Congress to make it illegal for a person to "import, sell, manufacture, transfer, or possess, in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce, a semiautomatic assault weapon." The bill included a definition of "semiautomatic assault weapon," which generally refers to a firearm that's able to fire one shot per trigger pull in quick succession. 

The 2023 version of the House bill attracted 208 Democratic co-sponsors; the Senate bill attracted 45 Democratic co-sponsors. In both cases, the votes of the co-sponsors alone would not be enough to pass the bills if all Republicans opposed them. 

In June 2022, a month after mass shootings at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, and a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, Biden signed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which passed Congress with all Democrats and some Republicans voting in favor.

The law introduced new federal crimes for firearm trafficking and straw purchasing — purchasing a firearm for someone else. It prohibited people convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence in a dating relationship from owning a gun, narrowing what's known as the "boyfriend loophole." 

The law mandated background checks for gun purchasers younger than 21. It also gave states financial incentives to pass "red flag" laws, which make it easier for courts to confiscate firearms from people who threaten themselves or others. The law funded violence intervention programs, mental health services and school safety programs.

Biden issued an executive order in March 2023 that expanded some gun safety measures. It directed Biden's Cabinet to increase public awareness about firearm crimes and improve investigation techniques and broadened the use of background checks.

Neither the legislation nor the executive order banned the sale and manufacture of assault weapons as Biden promised, though, and they didn't significantly limit their sales. We rate this Promise Broken.

As president, Joe Biden has been so far unsuccessful advancing one of his key agenda items: a ban on assault weapons, which have been used in a range of high-profile mass shootings.

In both chambers of Congress, Democratic lawmakers have introduced legislation that would make it "unlawful for a person to import, sell, manufacture, transfer, or possess, in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce, a semiautomatic assault weapon." The bill includes a lengthy section defining the term "semiautomatic assault weapon," but the phrase broadly refers to a firearm that is able to fire, in quick succession, one shot per trigger pull.

The House version has attracted 204 co-sponsors, all of them Democrats, while the Senate version has attracted 37 cosponsors, also all Democrats. While theco-sponsors account for large proportions of the Democratic caucuses in the two chambers, they are not enough by themselves to pass the bills, given near-universal Republican opposition.

Even though the Democrats have control of both chambers, neither bill has advanced beyond its initial introduction.

The House did pass legislation in March 2021 that would require background checks on most commercial firearm purchases and close what advocates call loopholes in the background check process. However, these are considered non-starters in the Senate, where at least 10 Republicans would be needed to break an all-but-certain filibuster.

"The filibuster has prevented the Senate from passing similar legislation for nearly a decade, including background checks legislation as well as bills to strengthen federal limits on the manufacture and sale of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines," said Ari Freilich, state policy director at Giffords, a group that advocates for tighter restrictions on guns. "The Senate has been a primary obstacle to passage of stronger laws" on guns.

We rate the promise Stalled.