"If Obama wants to do something, he has to make this front and center, because it's getting harder by the day," he adds.
Vice President Joe Biden, who met last week with a wide range of interest groups on gun violence, is expected to deliver recommendations to the president on Tuesday.
On Capitol Hill, lawmakers are proposing measures to renew the assault weapons ban, limit the size of high-capacity magazine clips, require universal background checks, increase mental-health screenings, and pressure Hollywood and the video-game industry to dial back the violence.
Sen. Joe Manchin (D) of West Virginia electrified the pro-gun control community when he announced that the slaughter of children at Sandy Hook “changed me,” and called on his “friends in the NRA” to be “at the table” on preventing gun violence.
But his main focus in appearances on Sunday talk shows was to assure gun owners that Congress will not rein in gun rights.
“I would tell all of my friends in the NRA, I will work extremely hard and I will guarantee you that there will not be an encroachment on your Second Amendment rights,” he said on ABC’s “This Week.”
“An assault weapons stand-alone ban on just guns alone will not go anywhere in the political reality we are in,” Senator Manchin said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” It has to be a “comprehensive approach,” he added, including mental health and video violence. The issues is not guns, he said, it’s a “culture of mass violence.”
