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 Eli | Email Lauren President JOE BIDEN was returning from Asia aboard Air Force One when he learned the news: A gunman had just killed 19 children and two teachers inside an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. On Wednesday, one year later, the president and first lady JILL BIDEN stood alone in the White House foyer before a memorial of 21 candles to mark the somber anniversary. “Remembering is important, but it’s also painful,” Biden said, lamenting that “too many schools, too many everyday places have become killing fields in communities across America.” Noting that a large majority of Americans now favor going further with gun safety reforms, Biden urged Congress to act. “How many more parents will live their worst nightmare before we stand up to the gun lobby?" Biden aides recalled the president being horrified by the news a year ago, heartbroken for the families, and frustrated by the inaction in Congress. He called Texas Gov. GREG ABBOTT mid-flight to offer federal support. When Marine One landed on the South Lawn after the long journey home, he walked into the Oval Office for a briefing on the shooting and to prepare the national address he would deliver in the Roosevelt Room that evening. The shooting led to what Biden has touted as the most significant gun safety legislation in three decades, the bipartisan Safer Communities Act that passed last year. The $13 billion law enhanced background checks for gun buyers under age 21 and made it a federal crime to obtain a firearm on the black market. But it stopped well short of what Biden and Democrats have called for: universal background checks and a ban on assault weapons. On Wednesday, Biden reiterated his call for Congress to go further. But Republicans have responded to the latest shootings by making it clear that, on gun laws, they’ve gone about as far as they’re going to go. If recent history is any guide, these anniversaries will continue to be layered over by future tragedies we’ll remember, as the years pass, mainly by the location. Colorado Springs, Buffalo, Parkland, Dayton, El Paso, Newtown, Aurora, Columbine. Since the Uvalde shooting, more than 650 mass shootings have occurred, 48 in Texas alone, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass shooting as an incident where bullets hit four or more people. Earlier this month in a USA Today op-ed marking the one-year anniversary of a grocery store shooting in Buffalo, N.Y., Biden put the onus on Congress to do more. But some activists say there’s more he can do, too. The youth-led March For Our Lives, a gun safety group founded in the aftermath of the Parkland, Fla., shooting, continues to urge Biden to create an office of gun violence prevention to improve policy and government coordination. “He keeps saying he’s done all he can, but that’s not completely true,” said MIKAH RECTOR-BROOKS, a spokesperson for the group. Biden did take action in March, signing an executive order to clarify the definition of what it means to be “engaged in the business” of selling firearms, closing a loophole that had allowed some gun sellers to avoid background checks on purchases. JOHN FEINBLATT, the president of Everytown for Gun Safety, praised Biden for “leading the strongest gun safety administration in history,” but added that it’ll be up to the ATF “to finish the job by fully implementing and enforcing the president’s executive orders to bring us as close to universal background checks as possible under current law.” Last July, when Biden touted the bipartisan gun safety bill at a South Lawn event attended by dozens who’ve lost loved ones to gun violence, the father of a Parkland victim interrupted the president’s speech and shouted that more needed to be done. Another person in the crowd that day was TOM SULLIVAN, a state lawmaker from Colorado who carried a photo of his son, Alex, one of 12 people killed inside an Aurora movie theater in the summer of 2012. Elected to the legislature in 2018, Sullivan has helped Democrats enact 12 gun violence prevention bills in the last five years. When he talked briefly with Biden after the event, they spoke about both having lost a son. Sullivan urged the president to keep pushing. “We need federal leadership on some of these big issues,” Sullivan said in an interview Wednesday. “A nationwide background check bill and the assault weapons ban have got to come federally. We need the FBI and ATF to run this, not Sheriff Billy Bob.” Whatever solace he takes from channeling his own grief into activism, Sullivan said anniversaries like Uvalde’s and similar mass shootings continue to affect him and others who’ve lost loved ones to gun violence. “Some days you wake up and you just don’t feel right and you can’t figure out why and then you remember, ‘Oh, this is the anniversary,’” he said. “Everybody else is just dealing with it today and today will pass, but we have to deal with it tomorrow.” MESSAGE US — Are you RYAN DAVIS, policy adviser for the National Economic Council? We want to hear from you. And we’ll keep you anonymous! 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