WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden used a nationally televised address Thursday to press Congress for new federal gun restrictions after mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas, and Buffalo, New York, calling for a renewed assault-weapons ban and limits on high-capacity magazines while acknowledging that lawmakers may instead pursue narrower measures capable of attracting bipartisan support.

“We must actually do something,” Biden said in his June 2 address, delivered from the White House after visits with victims’ families in both communities. He urged Congress to reinstate the federal assault-weapons ban that expired in 2004; if lawmakers would not do that, he said they should at least raise the minimum age for purchasing such weapons from 18 to 21.

The White House is asking for a broad package

Biden’s proposals extend beyond semiautomatic rifles. He called for banning high-capacity magazines, strengthening background checks, creating or expanding state “red flag” laws, requiring safe firearm storage and removing legal protections that limit lawsuits against gun manufacturers. He also emphasized mental-health services and school security, presenting the issue as a combination of firearm access, prevention and intervention.

The speech followed the May 24 attack at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, where a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers, and the May 14 attack at a Buffalo supermarket, where 10 people were killed in what federal authorities are investigating as a racially motivated attack. A shooting Wednesday at a medical office in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that killed four people added to the sense of urgency surrounding the address.

The scale of active-shooter violence has been rising. The FBI reported on May 23 that it had identified 61 active-shooter incidents in 2021, a 52.5% increase from 2020 and nearly double the 2017 count. Those 61 incidents killed 103 people and wounded 140, excluding the shooters.

The House is moving faster than the Senate

On the same day as Biden’s speech, the House Judiciary Committee approved H.R. 7910, the Protecting Our Kids Act, by a 25-19 vote. The committee’s official markup record shows the package was advanced after a daylong session and is headed toward a House floor vote.

The legislation includes several ideas Biden highlighted, including raising the age for certain semiautomatic rifle purchases, restricting large-capacity magazines and establishing federal standards for firearm storage. Rep. Rosa DeLauro said in a June 2 statement that the package also incorporates safe-storage provisions modeled on legislation she has sponsored.

House passage appears more attainable than Senate passage because Democrats control the chamber by a narrow majority. In the evenly divided Senate, however, most major legislation requires 60 votes to overcome a filibuster, making some Republican support essential. That procedural reality is pushing Senate negotiators toward a smaller package than either Biden’s request or the House bill.

Bipartisan Senate talks are focused on narrower areas of agreement

Sens. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, John Cornyn of Texas, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Thom Tillis of North Carolina have emerged as a central negotiating group. A June 1 account of the talks described potential areas of compromise that include incentives for state red-flag laws, changes to background-check procedures, mental-health funding and school-safety measures.

The talks are significant because they involve senators from both parties, but they remain preliminary. Murphy has said he favors broader restrictions but is willing to negotiate over measures that can secure Republican votes. Cornyn has emphasized that any agreement must protect the rights of law-abiding gun owners. The resulting Senate legislation, if there is one, may therefore look substantially different from the House package.

Biden used his address to argue that political difficulty should not become a reason for inaction. He also explicitly said the objective was not to confiscate firearms from lawful owners, a rhetorical effort to separate the proposals he supports from broader arguments over gun ownership itself.

New federal data show a wider firearm-death problem

The debate is being driven by mass shootings, but federal health data show that firearm deaths extend well beyond those incidents. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in May that the firearm homicide rate rose nearly 35% from 2019 to 2020, reaching its highest level in more than 25 years. Firearms were involved in 79% of homicides and 53% of suicides in 2020.

Those statistics complicate a policy debate that often focuses on the particular weapons and circumstances involved in highly visible attacks. Measures aimed at mass shootings may affect only part of the overall firearm mortality burden, while policies designed to reduce suicide, domestic violence and street violence involve different mechanisms and populations.

The administration has also pursued actions that do not require new legislation. In April, the Justice Department announced a final rule on privately made firearms, often called ghost guns, intended to require marking and recordkeeping for certain kits and unfinished frames or receivers that can readily be converted into functional weapons.

The next two weeks will test whether outrage produces legislation

The immediate legislative question is not whether Congress can produce proposals; both chambers already have them. It is whether Senate negotiators can define a package narrow enough to obtain at least 10 Republican votes while remaining substantial enough for Democrats to support.

Biden’s address puts presidential support behind the more expansive end of the debate. The House Judiciary vote puts a concrete bill on a path toward the floor. The Senate talks, however, are likely to determine whether any gun legislation can actually become law.

After decades in which major shootings have repeatedly generated national debate without producing broad federal restrictions, the White House is framing Uvalde and Buffalo as a test of whether that pattern will continue. The political gap remains large, but the existence of active bipartisan negotiations means the next phase will be measured not by speeches or hearings, but by whether lawmakers can translate a shared demand for action into text that can command 60 Senate votes.