Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. With help from Allie Bice. Send tips | Subscribe here | Email Alex | Email Eli PROGRAMMING NOTE: We’ll be off for Thanksgiving this Thursday and Friday, but back to our normal schedule on Monday, Nov. 28. We hope distance makes the heart grow fonder. For the second time in less than a week, the Biden White House woke up today to news of a mass shooting in America. Six people were killed and several others hospitalized after a Walmart manager allegedly opened fire in his store in Chesapeake, Virginia. Inside the administration, this set off a familiar, macabre series of events. The president’s team monitored the situation, confirmed the specifics and relayed the details to the president, who was in Nantucket for the holiday weekend. After that, the comms team put together a statement, which it issued under President JOE BIDEN’s name. Scrambling to address mass shootings has become a routine feature of White House operations — itself, an illustration of the pervasiveness of gun violence in America. Everyone now knows the drill. It wasn’t always this way. In a few weeks time, the country will mark the 10-year anniversary of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. That day was seminal for those in the Obama White House, Biden included. Aides recalled having to break the news of the shooting to BARACK OBAMA, only to watch him break down himself. It was widely regarded as the worst day of that White House. But over time, a numbness began to sink in. No amount of oratory, heartstring tugging, or elbow greasing, seemed to make a difference legislatively. After the shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., CODY KEENAN, Obama’s speechwriter, wrote about his relief that the president’s initial instinct was to skip giving a eulogy. “Part of it was to protect him against the general anger that nothing was going to change,” Keenan told West Wing Playbook. Joe Biden has visited two communities hit by mass shootings. Vice President KAMALA HARRIS has visited two others. The Biden White House has issued at least 16 statements under the president’s names to mark mass shootings, the anniversary of one, or a legal settlement involving one. At least three other times, Biden has had to devote a portion of scheduled remarks to address a shooting that day, including once in a discussion of bipartisan infrastructure reform , a review of White House transcript shows. His press secretaries have addressed other shootings (those that didn’t rise to the level of requiring a presidential statement) at least seven times. These figures don’t count the many statements all have issued about gun violence in general and the need for gun reforms specifically. In a matter of weeks, aides said, Biden will mark the Sandy Hook 10-year anniversary, as he has with so many others. Administration staffers acknowledged that the near-daily pattern of mass shootings is among the more difficult and emotional things they deal with, as it is for the country as a whole. “I've been to more mass shooting aftermaths than, I think, any president in American history, unfortunately,” Biden once declared. Unlike Obama, Biden has been able to shepherd through modest gun reforms . He issued an executive order that aimed to eradicate unregulated "ghost" guns. He’s managed to get a head of the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms confirmed . And he continues to aggressively push for the renewal of the assault weapons ban. But those in the trenches say more is now needed. JOHN FEINBLATT, president of Everytown for Gun Safety, said that the $750 million in the bipartisan gun safety law to help states implement crisis intervention statutes was a good start, but that public education is also key. "We need a national campaign for the use of red flag laws, which are basically: If you see something, say something," said Feinblatt. "In order for those laws to be used, people have to know about them.” Additionally, activists plan to push the president to clarify wording in the new gun safety law requiring individuals "in the business of" selling firearms to conduct background purchases. They want an executive order ensuring that part-time sellers don't have wiggle room. These fixes, Feinblatt notes, can come regardless of the fact that the House of Representatives will soon be under Republican control. He noted that the politics of guns has changed dramatically in the past decade, exemplified by the willingness of GOP senators to sponsor and vote for the bipartisan law passed after the shooting in Uvalde – and how Democrats didn’t pay a political price for it in the midterms . But critical to it all, he added, is to not succumb to the notion that the current reality around gun violence is fixed; that Americans are more or less doomed to live under these conditions. "It's important to recognize what has happened in a very short period of time," said Feinblatt. "But, there is more to do and the White House has a role to play here." MESSAGE US — Are you DOUG MCMILLON, CEO of WalMart? We want to hear from you! And we’ll keep you anonymous. Email us at westwingtips@politico.com .
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