US President Joe Biden meets with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on 31 May, 2022. Source: Getty / SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images
President Joe Biden asked New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern for advice on Tuesday after the latest US mass shooting but the White House also acknowledged the limitations it faces on gun control compared to its close allies.
Meeting in the Oval Office with Ms Ardern, Mr Biden referred to the 2019 Christchurch slaying of 51 people in mass shootings targeting Muslims.
“We need your guidance,” Mr Biden said, referring to the broad US-New Zealand partnership, but particularly on what he called a “global effort to counter violence and extremism online.”
“I want to work with you on that effort,” he added.
Mr Biden, who visited the Texan town of Uvalde on Sunday to mourn the deaths of 19 children and two teachers slain by a gunman using an assault-style rifle, said there was an “awful lot of suffering” and that “much of it is preventable.”
Less than two weeks earlier, Mr Biden had also visited the site in New York state of another mass shooting, this time targeting African Americans.
There is little chance of banning assault-style semi-automatic rifles like the AR-15, a model used in both the Texas and New York shootings yet also hugely popular among ordinary Americans for its ease of use and sleek, military-style look.
Mr Biden supports an assault weapons ban but there are so far not enough Republicans in the evenly split Senate to get a working majority.
The political resistance to tampering with easy access to firearms contrasts starkly with not only New Zealand and the closest US allies in Asia and Europe, but neighbouring Canada.
There, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Monday proposed banning sales of handguns, despite his country having far rarer experiences of mass shootings than across the border.
Nothing similar can be expected in the United States, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said on Tuesday.
Mr Biden “does not support a ban on the sale of all handguns,” she underlined. “We’ll leave it up to other countries to set their policies on gun ownerships.”
Under pressure from Democrats to show the government is at least trying to respond to the ever-growing toll, Mr Biden told reporters he would “meet with the Congress on guns, I promise you.”
The two leaders also aired shared concern about China’s bid to expand its influence in the Pacific and a senior US official said they discussed the need for in-person engagement with Pacific island leaders.
Their meeting took place amid a
by China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi that has worried New Zealand and the United States and US allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific.
Mr Biden said Washington had no desire to dictate to the region but to partner with them. “We have more work to do in those Pacific islands,” he said.
A joint statement after the meeting expressed concern about a recent security agreement between China and the Solomon Islands.
Ms Ardern told reporters both countries were strongly aligned “in furthering the Pacific values and the focus that Pacific island leaders have determined for themselves.”
The senior US official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the two sides discussed shared concerns about the challenges faced by Pacific island nations and the need to help them deal with issues such as the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change.
“They also had some fairly detailed discussion about the importance of in-person engagement with Pacific island leaders and the importance of the United States working closely with New Zealand and other partners as we continue to step up our efforts to engage more effectively in the Pacific,” he said.
Ms Ardern was the first New Zealand leader to visit the White House since Sir John Key met President Barack Obama in 2014.
China’s foreign minister was in Tonga on Tuesday as part of a tour through the Pacific islands region.
He signed agreements in Tonga for police equipment and fisheries cooperation, but Pacific island nations were unable to reach consensus in a meeting with Mr Wang a day earlier over a sweeping regional trade and security pact China has proposed.
New Zealand joined Mr Biden’s Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity, an economic bloc that excludes China and was designed to counter that country, during Mr Biden’s first trip to Asia as president last week.
Ms Ardern said the pact “presents a significant opportunity to build economic resilience in our region.”
