WASHINGTON — Well, this is awkward.
President Biden demanded punishment for families who leave guns unlocked Tuesday — in his first public remarks since his son Hunter was convicted of three felonies for illegally owning a gun that another Biden family member tossed into a public dumpster.
“It’s time we establish universal background checks — and by the way, and require the safe storage of firearms,” the 81-year-old said at a pro-gun control conference blocks from the White House. “We should hold families responsible if they don’t provide those locks on those guns.”
Biden went on to claim he had visited three “major crime scenes” where “the mother or father left open — left stuff out on the desk, left it out on the table and the kid came out and used it.”
Biden didn’t directly address the guilty verdict against his 54-year-old son while delivering the pre-scheduled speech to the group Everytown for Gun Safety, a nonprofit founded by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
The six-man, six-woman jury found Hunter guilty of deliberately lying on federal background check forms when he bought a .38-caliber Colt Cobra revolver in October 2018 by denying that he was abusing drugs — when in fact he was in the grip of a crack cocaine addiction.
Hallie Biden, the widow of the president’s elder son Beau and Hunter’s then-girlfriend, threw away the gun in a public grocery store dumpster 11 days after its purchase, setting in motion the criminal case. She did not face criminal charges and testified for the prosecution at trial.
An elderly dumpster diver found the revolver and turned it over to authorities. Authorities said the pouch the weapon was disposed in tested positive for cocaine, which Hunter himself admitted to abusing at the time.
It was not immediately clear if the gaffe-prone president’s demand for punishment of families who carelessly store guns was ad-libbed or part of his prepared script — though it was uttered just after Biden shared a seemingly unscripted line about duck hunters in Delaware not needing automatic weapons.
Following his remarks, Biden departed for a hastily arranged visit to Wilmington, Del., to console his son, who became the first child of a sitting president to be convicted of felonies.
Hunter faces up to 25 years in prison for violating existing federal gun laws, though it’s possible he will receive probation when he is sentenced later this year — possibly around the same time he stands trial beginning Sept. 5 for alleged tax fraud in Los Angeles
Biden made a number of other head-turning remarks in his first public appearance since his son’s conviction.
At one point, he referred to Vice President Kamala Harris, who controversially presided over about 1,900 marijuana convictions as San Francisco district attorney from 2004 to 2011, as a “pretty fierce prosecutor.”
Biden also misstated the acronym for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives as the “AFT” and incorrectly stated historical restrictions on cannon ownership.
As vice president, Biden was chairman of a pro-gun control task force established after the 2012 massacre of 20 children and six staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., and attracted criticism for dispensing gun advice that could ensnare Americans in criminal liability.
In 2013, for example, the then-VP advised gun owners to fire shotguns into the air or through closed doors at a perceived threat.
