President Joe Biden has pledged to New Yorkers and the nation that the federal government will step up its fight against gun violence by working more closely with police and communities to stop the bloodshed.
“It’s enough. Enough is enough,” Mr Biden told police, law enforcement officials and lawmakers gathered at the city’s police headquarters. “We can do something about this.”
But Mr Biden’s crimefighting strategy relies heavily on buy-in from state and local officials as he suggests ways to spend federal dollars and expands on initiatives already under way.
The modest initiatives demonstrate the limits to what he can do when there is no appetite in Congress to pass gun legislation.
Mr Biden came to New York a day after the funeral for the second of two New York City officers shot dead during a domestic violence call on January 21.
Officials wrapped up the event to get to the hospital, where another officer was being released after an injury in yet another shooting.
The visit gave the President a chance to push back against Republicans who claim he is soft on crime, and to distance himself from those in the left flank of his Democratic Party who want to shift funding away from police departments to social spending programmes.
“The answer is not to defund the police,” Mr Biden said. “It is to give you the tools, the training, the funding to be partners, to be protectors and know the community.”
Mr Biden ticked through how 316 people are shot every day and 106 killed, including 26 children who have died in gun violence so far this year.
In New York last month, an 11-month-old girl was wounded by a stray bullet and a teenage fast-food cashier was shot dead.
Thirty-two officers have been shot in the line of duty so far this year nationwide, seven of them killed.
Mr Biden is trying to find ways to combat crime while also pushing for greater accountability after high-profile killings of black people by police.
“The answer is not to abandon our streets,” Mr Biden said. “The answer is to come together, policing communities, building trust and making us all safer.”
Most of the talk on Thursday was centred on better policing. Efforts to take stronger legislative action in recent years have failed, even after 20 children and six adults were killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.
Like Democratic presidents before him, Mr Biden called on Congress to pass a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.
But he also spoke of the powerful gun lobby that has been effective at curbing any effort to rein in guns and that points to the Second Amendment right to bear arms.
“There’s no amendment that’s absolute,” Mr Biden insisted. “When the amendment was passed, it didn’t say anybody can own a gun — any kind of gun — and any kind of weapon.”
