President Obama has ordered Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to lead an interagency group to develop a multifaceted response to last week's mass shooting at a Connecticut school, a White House official said.
Mr. Obama will appear in the White House briefing room alongside Mr. Biden on Wednesday morning to announce the assignment but an aide said they will not announce any major policy decisions. Instead, the aide said the president will lay out a process for developing new policies.
The president promised during a speech at a memorial service in Newtown, Conn., on Sunday to “use whatever power this office holds†to prevent more tragedies like the one in which a gunman killed 27 people last Friday, including 20 children. He offered no specific prescriptions; aides have since said that he is looking at tighter gun regulations including a ban on assault weapons and possibly on high-capacity ammunition clips.
But they said he also wants to examine other factors, including the mental health system, education and possibly cultural dynamics, not just gun legislation. “He wants to expand the conversation beyond those specific areas of legislation to look at other ways we can address this problem,†Jay Carney, the White House press sec retary, said on Tuesday.
As a senator, Mr. Biden was one of the leading advocates of crime legislation in 1994 that included a ban on assault weapons. The ban generated a furious backlash among gun rights advocates who helped bring down the Democratic Congress in midterm elections later that year. The ban then expired in 2004 with barely a protest as Democrats remained skittish about the issue.
While Mr. Biden has often boasted of his role in passing the original assault weapon ban, Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, recalled that he was initially skeptical that it was even possible when she tried to attach it to his crime bill back in the ear ly 1990s.
“When I told Joe Biden, who was chairman of the Judiciary Committee, that I was going to move this as an amendment on the crime bill, he laughed at me,†she recalled on NBC's “Meet the Press†on Sunday. “He said, ‘You're new here. Wait till you learn.'†In the end, she passed the bill despite Mr. Biden's doubts and it was signed by President Bill Clinton.
Mr. Obama met Monday with Mr. Biden and three cabinet officials, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., Arne Duncan, the education secretary, and Kathleen Sebelius, the health and human services secretary, to discuss possible responses to the Newtown killings.
White House officials have cautioned against expecting immediate action, saying it may take weeks to develop a plan. Rather than trickle out a series of small proposals, the officials said they were leaning toward putting together a holistic approach that would address multiple factors involved in mass shootings.
Follow Peter Baker on Twitter at @pete rbakernyt.
