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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Laughs in Olympic Match Shooting & Pentathalon.
Clearly you’re not interested in having a rational conversation.
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Lmao, right, because you’re extremely niche use case should dictate how the rest of the world should adapt around you. how incredibly selfish.
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Lmao