Biden to announce first-ever federal office of gun violence prevention
President Joe Biden will announce the creation of the first-ever federal office of gun violence prevention on Friday, fulfilling a key demand of gun safety activists as legislation remains stalled in Congress, according to two people with direct knowledge of the White House’s plans.
Stefanie Feldman, a longtime Biden aide who previously worked on the Domestic Policy Council, will play a leading role, the people said.
Greg Jackson, executive director of the Community Justice Action Fund, and Rob Wilcox, the senior director for federal government affairs at Everytown for Gun Safety, are expected to hold key roles in the office alongside Feldman, who has worked on gun policy for more than a decade and still oversees the policy portfolio at the White House. The creation of the office was first reported by The Washington Post.
Oh, man. Can you imagine the misery of being appointed to this post? Literally half of the government would hate and despise you and would look for ways to undercut you just to have an extra talking point while they stand in the hall talking to Fox News. And to top it off, what could you actually do to affect change? I sympathize with the poor workers of this office.
So…department of education?
Or the EPA, or the CDC, or the IRS, or...
You'd be surprised by how much oil companies hate the DOT.
What next, the FAA and FCC?
Also knowing that you’re guaranteed to be “downsized” on the first day of the next party change in the White House.
And imagine how much security you'll have to hire to keep yourself from getting shot.
It's just a job.
Half?
How few people do you think work for the government?
Next time a Republican takes office they will set this department's budget to 1 dollar, just like the consumer protection bureau. It will get to the point that parts of the government will only work when dems are in charge.
I was really curious to learn more about CFPB's financing, I found an article about Trump slashing their budget by a quarter but I haven't been able to find anything about their funding year by year.
It's turbo fucked if they haven't refunded them because they've returned billions to consumers by prosecuting fraudulent organizations like Wells Fargo!!
That's "Starve the Beast" politics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast
Everyone should know what this is and how and why it is done.
In short, Republicans want to starve a department of funding to a level below which they can not properly function. Then they can claim that agency isn't doing it's job, so we might as well cut it altogether. They are trying to set up these departments and programs to fail and can come in and claim they are saving taxpayers money. What they are really doing is making it easier for corporations and the ultra rich to pollute or side-step their tax obligations. Kind of hard to claim someone is a tax cheat if there isn't an IRS to audit them. Same with the EPA, Amtrak, USPS, DoEducation, and a host of other departments.
Once again, we can thank Reagan for this mess.
They've got to earn their $16 million a year from the gun lobby by doing even less than they did back before Sandy Hook, when it was only $8 million a year.
Isn't it just grand to look back on the last 365 days of gun violence and see what figures people put on it? Tens of thousands of lives. Hundreds of them children.
The pro-gun crowd will bury them just to avoid inconvenience. They don't want to wait for their guns, pass a background check, demonstrate they know how to responsibly handle them or store them securely.
Sure, they'll jerk themselves raw as they publicly congratulate themselves for doing any of those, but the moment someone wants to turn "suggestions" into "laws", they're all too happy to be represented by overweight men stuffed into plate carriers.
For the politicians and manufacturers though, it's strictly business.
Republicans get $16 million a year and a bloc of voters who will tolerate all manner of horrific acts, as long as they happen to other people.
In return, they insist that we mustn't change a thing until every man, woman and child in America has been completely cured of mental illness, to a level far beyond current medical science, so perfectly that nobody ever relapses and all in the few days it takes to load up on semi-automatic firearms.
Not only can you buy their souls, they're not even that expensive.
Why would Republicans axe more money for cops? This has always been what they wanted
What are they going to do that the ATF and FBI don’t already do?
Prevention of gun violence isn’t exactly the remit of either of those agencies. The ATF focuses on the tracking of and illegal sales of guns while the FBI focuses on crimes committed with them (and other crimes, of course). Neither of those are about prevention of gun violence.
A separate agency that can focus more on the social issues that are behind gun violence could act in many ways that neither of the other two agencies could while not having to worry about drawing focus or manpower, from how those two agencies operate.
They could provide free firearm training courses and encourage young people to take them. Which would help with accidents.
I doubt they are going to give this agency the necessary tools to lower poverty and the wealth gap, lower the rate of single parents, increase healthcare affordability, increase housing production, and destroy the culture of degrading those who try to better themselves. These are the issues that cause people to be unhappy enough with life they chose to murder. Happy individuals with productive lives don't generally decide murder is the correct course of action.
It hardly seems sensible for a government agency designed to prevent gun violence to then go and train people to use them.
All gun use is inherently violent.
If your goal is to lower deaths from cars, would it "hardly seem sensible for a government agency to train people to use them"? Training lowers accident rates.
There's probably a few other things that can be done but that's generally correct. Frankly, the solution to gun violence is to remove all guns. Make the situation impossible. That won't happen and neither will appropriate legal restrictions to ownership with the country the way it is, so training and other preventive measures are the next best thing.
We’re not talking about cars here, however. We’re talking about guns. All gun use is violent, so the logical way to reduce gun violence is to not use them at all. The same isn’t true for cars.
Thanks for the false equivalency, though.
This comment is on par with those that seek to reduce abortions by banning them. In both cases, you have absolute positions "no guns", "no abortions" that ignore the fact that people have decided they need these things and are going to get them. Similarly, those positions ignore real, practical steps, that help address the underlying issues.
The smarter thing for reducing abortions would be free contraceptives.
The smarter thing for reducing gun violence (when it's accidental) is absolutely what the other person here said, train people how to use them properly and safely.
Accidental firings are an issue but are honestly not a huge source of deaths overall. The main issues are illegally sourced guns from theft or straw purchases. Those can be mitigated by safe storage laws, gun registration, and current permits for gun purchases.
And we're not gonna do that either. I shall decline to participate in any of those.
Except you get abortions at the recommendation of a medical professional, who is recommending guns and for what?
Hunters for hunting... yes they do still exist. Speed/target shooters... because they find the sport fun. Police officers... because you're being stalked(?)
The point isn't to justify guns more, less, or equal to abortions; they're not the same thing. What they are is things that different people come to different ways, that have desirable and undesirable characteristics.
The point is we can increase the desirable and decrease the undesirable with small (from a cultural view) changes or we can get nowhere with rage inducing "all or nothing" takes.
I think you're missing the point: the analogy of medical to commodity doesn't work at all because medical decisions have built in gatekeepers
I would be all for a law where in order to buy a new gun you had to sit down with somebody who asked you why you wanted to have a gun and even just like handed you a pamplet with statistical gun ownership risks. That's literally a wing of gun control legislation: background checks, licensing, mental health screening, etc would be the analog of the doctor, referal, etc in the comparison, but it doesn't exist.
But post 1980s NRA interepretation of the 2nd amendment in the US is as a right to purchase them as a commodity. Abortion is a wholly different thing where a medical professional guides somebody through a process with risks that must be stated and evaluated.
Comparing a commodity model to a medical process just undermines whatever point you think you're trying to make.
This is irrelevant. If it makes the point incomprehensible to you, fair enough.... But that doesn't mean that there's not a point you're not getting.
Another false equivalence about an unrelated subject.
No, it's not a false equivalence at all. It speaks to the failure of absolutism to get ANYTHING done.
If you can’t see how comparing abortions to guns is obviously a false equivalence, then you’re clearly not interested in having a rational conversation.
If you think it was about abortion or guns, you're missing the point.
Edit: I'm a bit perturbed in general, you're just yelling "false equivalence." If you really want to claim "false equivalence" you first need to understand what's actually being compared. It sure as hell isn't abortion and gun rights. What's being compared is how absolutisms trade incremental progress and compromise for all or nothing gambles that are the fundamental foundation of everything that's wrong with American politics at the moment. You won't take a x% reduction in gun related injuries and deaths by teaching people that already have them how to use them safely to prevent accidental injury because "all gun use is inherently violent" and ... (edit again, I'm removing the words I put in your mouth).
Well, if it isn’t about abortion or gun violence, then it’s a strawman, instead of a false equivalence, or possibly both. But the point about you not being interested in having a rational conversation stands.
Laughs in Olympic Match Shooting & Pentathalon.
Clearly you’re not interested in having a rational conversation.
Maybe not encourage guns to be sold to cartels, unlike the ATF Fast and Furious program. It was supposed to track firearms going south, but just lost them.
Operation Wide Receiver under GWB did the same thing and had the exact same issues. The thought behind the programs is not bad. Implementation was fucking terrible though.
I do love how Republicans flipped shit about Fast and Furious but none of them had any qualms with GWB's operation.
Actually collect data on police shootings?
Shoot your cat and goldfish instead of just your spouse and your dog
You're thinking of the police.
No, that's what this is in addition to.
People said the same thing about DHS when it was spawned forth into being. Maybe not a great comparison, but I feel like this one has a little more purpose to it other than job creation.
Now you're just scaring me.
Whoo boy, that's gonna set off the crazies. And finally Rick Scott will know which Federal agency he wants to eliminate when asked the question. I don't see this as particularly effective or constructive going into an election year. But what do I know?
If they focus on policy that isn't gun control it will help. If they only exist to push gun control you're prolly right. Either way, gun stores will prolly win when the nutters go buy more rifles.
Yep going harder on gun control stuff is going to do nothing but lose votes for Democrats. Because if you're already anti-gun then you're voting [D] anyway right? Personally I'm never voting for any politician who proposes to limit any freedoms. I'm pro-freedom only. I don't really have much to vote for these days.
Bssed
It’s a nice thought.
To go along with all the prayers.
An office of prayers is strictly forbidden by the first amendment.
3, 2, 1...here come the gun nuts...
As expected every time guns are brought up in a political context, the comments are already full of people talking past each other while ignoring the real issues.
It is exactly as difficult to get rid of guns in this country as it would be to get rid of the electoral college, and the electoral college has done thing like lead directly to the covid pandemic being far worse than it had to be because Trump fired the guy we had in position to warn everyone if China leaked a pandemic.
Instead of discussing that, all you're going to find in a thread like this is back and forth about getting rid of guns (nearly impossible) or decrying the department as redundant (the DHS is proof this is also meaningless) or the like.
If something is not realistically achievable in the short term, that means we shouldn't be able to talk about it?
I disagree. If we limit discourse only to the immediately achievable we stop talking about how things should be, and how best to get there. Sometimes change happens overnight, sometimes it takes decades. It's worth talking about.
It definitely feels like a lost cause banning guns. It’s part of the culture. When we banned guns in Australia after one single mass shooting, I don’t believe Australia had nearly as much of a gun loving culture. It was still seen as a tool in the country side for hunting and such. I don’t know the answer to changing culture. It’ll take generations possibly. Smoking was seen like an everyday thing in the 60s. Now it’s disgusting. Perception can change eventually.
Most people are not asking to "get rid of guns." Most people are asking for restrictions that keep people safe, not least our school children, and a ban on military-style weapons like AR-15s. That's not unreasonable nor impossible.
AR-15s are functionally the same as the majority of rifles, they're semi automatic. Calling AR-15s military style immediately shows you know almost nothing about guns.
We'd have a better return on our investment banning handguns which are used in more deadly non-police shootings by a whole fucking lot.
Yeah, I'd call AR-15s military style. It's ok if you don't. No matter what you call them, it's idiotic that random people run around with them.
Can you define what about them makes you consider them military style?
And what are you thinking of when you say "random people running around with them", because legally anyone who purchases them is required to pass an FBI background check to make sure they're not a felon, among other things.
I consider semi-automatic and automatic firearms to be military style.
By "random" I just mean anyone who can pass a background check. The easy access to weapons is what stands out in American society when it comes to gun violence.
So just to be clear, that's 99% of guns, and automatic is essentially already out of the equation since nobody makes or sells those anymore because of ATF regulations. Virtually all modern guns are semi automatic.
You do know AR-15s that consumers can buy are already not automatic right?
You can try to twist my words as much as you want. Nothing new there. All I'm doing is calling for a ban on any weapon that's designed to kill as many people as possible in as little time as possible.
"Twisting your words" (which didnt hapoen) then you go and use sophist goalpost moving.
Nice.
You claim that no one is asking to get rid of guns, and then call for a ban on an entire class of firearms (and a vague one, "military-style weapons", which is intentionally vague and demonstrates a lack of knowledge of firearms).
Make a decision please.
The 2nd Amendment was not written with AR-15s or any other military-style weapons in mind. A full ban on those weapons is reasonable and possible.
With that logic, the 1st amendment doesn't apply to the internet, phones, television, photos, or video.
Your understanding of the second amendment (and firearms in general) is flawed, and any attempt to disarm the working class shall be frustrated. It will not happen. A ban on rifles is not reasonable, it is class warfare.
It's also an attack on disabled and women.
It's not flawed. Your understanding is flawed. You live in fear. Don't live in fear.
I don't live in fear. I hope to never have to use my tools, no matter what they are. But just how I need my socket set when my car breaks down, I have my firearms if I need to defend myself or my loved ones.
You must be living in fear of something since you feel the need to be armed all the time. What are you afraid of?
Do I live in fear of sealed boxes if I carry a pocket knife?
I wonder if a pocket knife could kill 60 people and wound more than 400 from a hotel room in Las Vegas...
Hahahaha.
Yet more ignorance.
You could own canons when it was written, and fully automatic weapons already existed.
It was written with exactly the change in tech in mind, and if you had bothered to educate yourself (by reading things like Federalist Papers or the Adams-Jefferson letters) you'd know this. But you'd rather operate from ideology and hubris.
This is such a clown argument. Canons cannot be used to kill 60 people and wound more than 400 from a hotel room in Las Vegas. Get real!
Hahahahaah. Thanks for the chuckle!
What are you, 12? As usual, you gun nuts have no real arguments.
Ah, yes, sophistry. Nice.
Define military style
Semi-automatic and automatic.
Automatic is defacto illegal unless you go through a very lengthy process whereby you register yourself and your weapon and pay money directly to the ATF. Only very few individuals own automatics for this reason.
Literally every modern handgun and rifle is semi automatic, save for skeet shooting break-action shotguns and some revolvers.
So? My point still stands. It's designed to kill as fast as possible. It should be banned.
I will always take the side of our school children and a safe society over guns. More guns do not create safety, they exacerbate violence. Most other developed countries do not have this kind of violence, and they do not have the easy access to weapons designed to kill as many as possible as fast as possible.
So you're calling for virtually all guns to be banned then except for shotguns and revolvers?
I'm calling for any weapon that's designed to kill as many people as possible in as little time as possible to be banned.
And that's 99% of weapons, because what's what guns do, they all kill things with a single trigger pull. You're asking for a de facto ban and that's absolutely a losing position.
And that's not even to mention that your position effectively means "I only believe the police and the military should have guns". Because that's what would happen.
To quote Benjamin Franklin here, "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." Anyone is free to relocate to those other developed countries you mentioned if they do not want the burden of their own personal liberties and rights, but stripping those rights from everyone else in the USA doesn't fly well here.
Not true. You obviously know nothing about immigration to other countries.
Last I checked the USA wasn't on any country's immigration blacklist. You still need to have some kind of useful skill for a work visa, and there are unique costs to international moves, but it's far from illegal to move away from the US. Additional costs if you want to renounce your US citizenship instead of holding dual citizenship wherever you move to, but that's a personal decision there unless you move to a place that requires renouncing citizenship as part of gaining it like the US does. Unless you were conflating free as is freedom for free as in no cost, but that would be silly given the context where this entire discussion thread is about freedom.
The difficult problem is the ones who decide to do bad things with guns, don't exactly have much respect for the law. Pass whatever restrictions you want, if someone wants to shoot anyone badly enough, they will find a way.
But that's not really a good reason to not have regulations. "People are going to steal your shit if they want to badly enough" does not mean theft shouldn't be a crime.
Sure, they may find a way, but if it's harder to find that way, there's a chance they'll either change their minds or use a tool that's less lethal and will kill fewer.
The US has a unique problem in the Western world, and what sticks out is access to weapons.
IMO a more robust mental and other healthcare system and social services would go a lot farther in preventing these kinds of things. Identifying and fixing/containing the people that are so deranged that they would kill others would stop most killings and the kinds of things that lead up to it. Most of the gun crime is a symptom of a much larger problem of people with little to no support lashing out.
You think Americans are just that much more mentally ill than people in every other developed country on earth? Of course not. The one thing that stands out in the US is easy access to weapons.
Yes I do but that's beside the point. The vast majority of gun owners never do anything criminal with them. It's people with mental health problems who snap or criminals who're using them to perpetrate other crimes (many of whom would probably not be criminals if they had proper social support.
Countries with strict gun control haven't solved the root of the problem. People can still be dangerous without guns and if we can't trust someone to own a gun we really shouldn't trust them to have free reign to interact with society without supervision either.
Every gun shoots lead all the same. It doesn't matter what "style" it is.
So it shouldn't matter if people are only allowed to own black powder muskets then, right?
Then banning some of them should pose no problem for gun enthusiasts.
I though we were switching over to environmentally friendly tungsten?
Some weapons, including AR-15s, are specifically designed to kill as many people as possible in as short a time as possible. Makes a big difference.
Wait, who's talking about banning guns? Nobody in the thread has mentioned it and I did try to read all the comments. I even did a quick ctrl+f for keywords just to make sure and found nothing.
Look up
Where exactly? If that comment isn't older than my comment or comes as a result of the person I was replying to planting the seed I'm probably gonna block you
Lol alright bro, please do it.
So where exactly?
You sure you read the comments? Lmao.
Link to a comment, go ahead
“After months of research, we have written a 1000 page report proving the solution is fewer guns.”
Republicans: “MORE GUNS! ARM EVERYONE!”
From the WaPo article:
So it's going to be a purely policy role within the White House? Well that's disappointing. I was hoping it was going to be somewhere in HHS, or at least DoJ.
That would likely require explicit funding. Yes this is just to make a headline. He could actually direct the ATF to follow up on straw purchases, improve data sync with NICS and other federal databases if he wanted to do something meaningful.
Great idea, but I do not have faith that this will be well executed.
If the democrats had the same drive as their republican counterparts, this would be a better country.
The only reason the GOP is as powerful as it is is because the Dems are so fucking terrible at playing the damn game. Pick your battles. Good idea or not - Biden is trying real hard to lose this election.
The biggest single-issue voting blocks in the county are pro-lifers and pro-gun people. Even if most people want stronger gun control and better abortion access, they don't base the entirety of their votes on those positions. It's not like Dems or moderates who are anti-gun would vote for Trump or Biden were pro-gun.
The only time being pro gun-control is advantageous is in a primary, which Biden doesn't have to worry about. In the general election it's entirely detrimental to a campaign.
about time
Hopefully he can stay awake and read the teleprompter, and do exactly as he's told.
Weird, I read an article on Breitbart today saying he's the most dangerous man in America, ever.
Shit if the conservative freaks actually understood the reality of the situation.
What is the reality of the situation, Shadywack?
Biden's no danger, the 1%'ers he works for is, just like every other puppet that gets
electedselected.I see where the wack part of your name comes from.
I guess I'm wack for disliking both Trump and Biden. I must not exist in this universe.
Your words, not mine.
I was commenting more on your theory but I won't tell you how to think.
Honest question: has he ever fallen asleep at the job? Because it seems that Trump came up with the moniker to slander him and everybody started pretending that he had
Everytime I see footage of him lately, he doesn't know where he is, where he's suppose to be, and he's obviously asking what he's suppose to do.
Can you link to all this footage?
I sure can, the question is can you accept that the last two Presidents are dipshit puppets?
Receipts first, please
Here's a good one, https://youtu.be/aL-wyLLzuYA?si=Sv1lcbcuc8GsFNzX
bumbling, clueless, and barely knows where he even is, and besides he just fucking looooooooooooooves China, I'm surprised we don't see the shape of Xi Jin Ping's dick embossed in one of his cheeks he sucked that dick so hard.
Wait, what? What is this about? I'm asking about all this "recent footage" of the guy sleeping on the job and all I get is some biased YouTuber really stretching the truth and blatantly misrepresenting pieces of footage for what could have many interpretations about him. I could gather footage of most world leaders alive who have fumbled, tripped, or randomly paused mid-speech, edit it and make them look really dumb. But all I'm seeing is that what you're accusing Biden of is simply not true and that it comes from Trump. The topic is the moniker "sleepy Joe" in case we forgot what we're talking about.
Listen, I'm not here to take the man's side--he's not even my president. But you guys really seem like you get off on making things up about him for the sake of it. Let's be grown ups and speak about things that have actually happened instead of falling for the lying orange man's circlejerk. Why is Biden "sleepy"? My question was dead-simple.
Are any of the points brought up in that video invalid? He's sleepy, senile, and useless as a leader. Seems like you're real defensive, but I don't know why. Whoever secures the nominations on either party doesn't give a shit about you or what you think, and goes on to do what they're told. Obama was the rare outlier that actually did good things while being articulate and skilled at addressing a crowd. He may have had his puppet strings too, but he was at least respectible. Biden's a pathetic joke, and I don't see any good coming out of the next election cycle.
I think you've missed the entire point and willingly ignored what I'm trying to get at, which is making false statements about the people you don't like. And yes, there are plenty in those videos, because they could have various interpretations.
And just like I'm supposedly very defensive for trying to ground this in truth, you're very aggressive about keeping up the lies. Get it through your head that this isn't exactly about politics.
So I guess we can all agree that the sleepy Joe thing is not real and it's yet another conservative lie, as always.