CLAIM: During his Thursday night primetime speech President Biden claimed that we  “should expand background checks” and talked of how such checks would keep guns out of the wrong hands.

VERDICT: Mostly False.

The United States has had FBI background checks on retail gun sales since 1998. Have those checks kept some guns out of the wrong hands? Certainly.

However, Biden’s speech was framed around mass shootings–he used examples of mass shootings in the prelude to the speech.

What are “expanded background checks”?

When Biden and other Democrats push to “expand background checks” they are pushing to require background checks for retail to be expanded so as to include private sales as well. And to make this push while simultaneously claiming that such an expansion would keep guns out of the wrong hands could give listeners the impression that mass shooters are getting their guns from private sales now, to avoid background checks. But the facts are quite the opposite.