The Biden administration is creating a new White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention as an effort to coordinate federal policy on guns, and if that also reminds people which party actually wants to do something to reduce gun violence with the 2024 election coming up, Biden won’t mind, either.
Vice President Kamala Harris will oversee the office as part of her portfolio of executive branch duties, and the office’s director will be Stephanie Feldman, a longtime gun policy wonk and Biden adviser who, following the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012, helped then-VP Biden develop policies and legislative proposals aimed at reducing gun violence.
“Every time I’ve met with families impacted by gun violence as they mourn their loved ones, and I’ve met with so many throughout the country, they all have the same message for their elected officials: ‘do something.’ It’s why, last year, I signed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act to keep guns out of dangerous hands, and have taken more executive action than any President in history to keep communities safe.”
Gosh, that was nice of him to include a link to our story about the modest gun bill Congress passed last year after the Uvalde school massacre, which really was just in 2022. Unless we just dropped that link in there ourselves to deceive you, which would be pretty low of us.
Politico notes that gun safety activists have been calling on Biden to create an office like this,
which advocates see as a concrete step forward as gun safety legislation remains stalled in Congress. Activists have argued that such an office will help the administration coordinate on gun policy issues across the federal government, while also allowing the White House to show leadership on the issue.
Biden announced the new office this morning with a Tweet that says what most Americans have been thinking for a long time now:
What’s needed more than anything is of course for enough Americans to become angry and sick enough of all the killing and maiming that they’ll finally vote in a Congress willing to do more than nibble around the edges of the gun problem — and of course for electoral politics more widely to make it possible to replace the current Supreme Court, which consists of three Democrats and six AR-16s that hide in human form most of the time.
That said, It does feel like the increased activism among young people since Parkland … and Uvalde … and El Paso … — and all of the other human sacrifices on the altar of the Second Amendment — signals the start of a long term change. It doesn’t feel quite so much like the NRA has a monolithic veto against all progress on guns. We’re gonna go with hope, because the alternative is unthinkable.
President Biden and Vice President Harris will hold a Rose Garden event to announce the new office at 2:45 Eastern; here’s the livestream for that announcement ceremony.
[White House / Politico]
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