The administration has not given details of what Biden will announce, but Politico reported earlier that he will issue executive actions to restrict certain types of gun sales.

In particular, Biden is expected to target so-called "ghost guns," homemade guns that are untraceable because they have no serial numbers.

Biden is expected to be accompanied by Attorney General Merrick Garland at the announcement.

Biden has long promised to get tough on the US gun culture that he says fuels an epidemic of mass shootings, as well as the even more deadly, yet less reported, daily stream of gun crimes and suicides.

He has come under pressure to act from Democrats after mass killings in Colorado, Georgia and California.

Biden says he supports tighter background checks for firearms buyers and a ban on military-style rifles dubbed assault weapons.

Biden backed an assault weapons ban in 1994 when he was a senator. The law expired a decade later and has never been renewed, with Republicans increasingly rigid in opposing what they depict as an attack on the constitutional right to bear arms.