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.

  • Lightborne@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    If Americans would stop fetishizing guns to the point of sacrificing children to the altar of their bang-bang toys, we could actually have a respectable society.

    • bobman@unilem.org
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      1 year ago

      Nah. I’ve thought about this.

      If they couldn’t use guns, they’d use cars. If they can’t use cars, they’d focus on torture. i.e. instead of trying to kill as many people as possible, just try to make whoever you catch suffer as much as possible before pulling the plug.

      These are all band-aids to avoid addressing the real problem: those who feel they have nothing to live for so they take their anger out on society.

      The solution to the problem is reducing the disparity in wealth. It won’t eliminate all of them, but it will severely reduce them. This is why nobody is talking about it. The ruling class has been successful, again, in getting us to squabble over bullshit to avoid addressing the real issue, which is always the money.

      • Lightborne@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I’ve thought about this.

        This ought to be good.

        If they couldn’t use guns, they’d use cars

        LOL

      • shalafi@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        School shooting started because of exactly one reason: Columbine. If those monsters had got their pipe bomb working, that would be the weapon of choice.

        There were plenty of weapons in circulation before Columbine, and school shooting were not a thing. I’m 52, I remember.

        • bobman@unilem.org
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          1 year ago

          Bombs are not people’s weapons of choice because they require some knowledge to build and pose a substantial risk to the amateur builder.

          • ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            1 year ago

            Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I was a… shall we say precocious, child. I made a lot of bombs in my back yard lol, started when I was like 11. Illegal as fuck but really fun, only made small firecracker type stuff but all I needed to do to scale that up was math and use metal instead of cardboard, I had already learned you needed a bit of air in the tube for the mix to ignite, etc. And all of this was before the Boston Marathon bombing showed us the power of a pressure cooker from Kohls, some nails from Home Depot, and a few chemicals I won’t list here but that can be easily found online/purchased in stores. Not gonna give out recipes on lemmy though lol, just saying, it isn’t as hard as you think, and as long as you aren’t Jack Parsons you’ll be ok.

            (Warning: do not attempt at home, I am not responsible for your mistakes or actions, nor the government’s in arresting you for this illegal shit. And it goes without saying but if you do look any of this shit up, don’t use it to harm stuff, even “for the greater good,” just have fun with small booms, they’re fun enough on their own! Science!)

            • bobman@unilem.org
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              1 year ago

              it isn’t as hard as you think, and as long as you aren’t Jack Parsons you’ll be ok.

              I mean, there’s stories coming out all the time of people blowing themselves up when making their own bombs. It’s a risk most people wouldn’t want to take if there are other options.

              • ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                1 year ago

                Well, don’t work with unstable chemicals in your front yard and you won’t go all Jack Parsons, stick with stable. Do I seem like some kind of mega-genius to you?! If I can do it anyone can.

                • bobman@unilem.org
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                  1 year ago

                  Even people who are more experienced than you can have issues.

                  You sound really cocky, so maybe it’s good you stopped messing with explosives, lol.

      • SeaJ@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        If they couldn’t use guns, they’d use cars. If they can’t use cars, they’d focus on torture. i.e. instead of trying to kill as many people as possible, just try to make whoever you catch suffer as much as possible before pulling the plug.

        Cars are quite a bit slower and a hell of a lot more obvious than a gun. They might switch to that (they have not in other countries) but that would still certainly result in fewer deaths overall. Not sure why they would possibly switch to torture. That one does not seem to have any basis in reality.

        You are correct that wealth disparity is one of the big parts of the puzzle. The other big party of the puzzle is how easy it is to get a gun due to how many there are floating around. Things like straw purchases being rampant means that it is pretty easy to obtain an illegal gun. Gun registration would help a bit with that as well as something like requiring a current gun permit to purchase new guns.

        • bobman@unilem.org
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          1 year ago

          They might switch to that (they have not in other countries)

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Toronto_van_attack

          Not sure why they would possibly switch to torture.

          Because if they can’t kill a lot of people but still want to cause as much harm as possible, torturing is the next best option. That’s how terrorism works. If you’re innocent to the world you live in, this might not make sense.

          • SeaJ@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            Let me know when any other country has as many car attacks per capita as there are shootings per capita in the US. I’ll wait. Cherry picking one incident means jack shit.

            Most shootings are not to inflict the most damage. There is no more torture in countries with stricter gun laws than there is here in the US. If you have some evidence that there is, feel free to share it but until then all you have is ridiculous scare mongering horse shit.

        • ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          1 year ago

          Things like straw purchases being rampant

          Straw purchases are already illegal and punishible by a considerable prison sentence already, can’t make it double illegal. Registration won’t help, nor will purchase permits (which historically, as in last year, NC had those and got rid of them when the sherrifs, who got to choose who owned handguns in their counties, decided black people couldn’t own them. 60% of Pistol Purchase Permit denials were to black people) as they can both be circumvented by simply reporting the gun stolen when you sell it (and also PPPs are racist as fuck, even if that isn’t the intent that is how they were actively being used in NC, and that was the intent because it was a Jim Crowe era law. The potential for abuse is too great.)

          • SeaJ@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            I realize that straw purchases are already illegal. The issue is that it is difficult to figure out who is doing straw purchases. The way to do that would be registration which absolutely would help. It’s a bit hard to find out who is doing the straw purchases without much of a trail.

            And you do realize you can do permitting without it being racist, right? Sit through a safety class and do a test if you are looking to purchase a new one in a different year. You only get racism when the process is not objective.

            • ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              1 year ago

              The way to do that would be registration which absolutely would help

              “Help” maybe a little, but it’s trivial to bypass by reporting the gun as stolen or making it yourself, which is easier to do than you’d assuredly like to think (you can learn how in about a week, and that’s slow, and then they take like a few hours to make once you know how.) It won’t help as much as addressing the root causes.

              And you do realize you can do permitting without it being racist, right?

              Yes, but have you been to America recently? Good luck.

              Sit through a safety class and do a test if you are looking to purchase a new one in a different year

              Why? Gun safety doesn’t change year upon year, Cooper’s four rules have been the same since like 1970 and every private range in the country makes you watch videos teaching it before you get or renew your membership. Even subscribing to your theory, you’d only need to do it once for your first purchase. Year over year mental health checks would be another story, but they’d be useless tied to purchases and on top of that, they’re abelist.

              • SeaJ@lemm.ee
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                1 year ago

                Having to report the gun as stolen would mean someone is having to report multiple gun thefts a year. That raises a serious red flag and means the person is at the very least not properly storing their weapons. And it may be easy to CNC your own lower but that is still much more difficult than walking into a gun store and picking up a gun.

                It won’t help as much as addressing the root causes.

                We can agree there. But there is a difference in scale. Addressing the other gun violence root causes (aside from ease of access) of income inequality and mental health are major tasks that are fiscally and politically expensive. Registration is extremely low cost in comparison.

                Why? Gun safety doesn’t change year upon year

                The more something is hammered into people, the more they will actually remember. Just because you learned a couple rules a decade ago does not mean you remember them. A large portion of people who own guns do not even know the four basic rules. I know several people who could not name them and one of them even has a concealed carry permit and did test on those once a decade ago.

                every private range in the country makes you watch videos teaching it before you get or renew your membership.

                That is simply not correct. A overwhelming majority of gun owners are also not members of private ranges. I can only think of a few people that I know that own guns and are members of a range.

                Even subscribing to your theory, you’d only need to do it once for your first purchase.

                The first purchase that year.

                Year over year mental health checks would be another story, but they’d be useless tied to purchases and on top of that, they’re abelist.

                Mental health checks are too subjective. There are already fuck head Republicans trying to use that excuse to block the trans community from being able to purchase firearms. As for being ableist…yeah. That is kind of the point. If you are not able to differentiate between reality and your delusions, you are not really able to safely operate guns.

                We could always go back to how it was when the country was founded where you registered your firearm and had to have it inspected to make sure that it was in working order. I’m sure the Constitutional originalists would be fine with that. /s

                • ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                  1 year ago

                  Not necessarily, if you buy them slowly and then have a “break in” where they all “get stolen” about every 5 years, then you have a wealth of guns to sell on the black market, and your not stolen ones you buy legally to supply the next “robbery,” rinse and repeat.

                  CNC is probably the easiest but most expensive, there’s also the Luty SMG and a myriad of 3d printed lowers that actually work at least for a few thousand rounds which is certainly enough for a school shooting. Luty is probably the hardest, but all the parts are at Home Depot and the books aren’t that hard to follow, and Ender 5s are like $300 now and 3d printing is just a hair harder than CNC.

                  Registration of new sales you mean? Because getting the 600,000,000+ already unregistered ones registered is basically an impossible task, nobody will comply. At that point I’d say that tbh addressing inequality and such would actually be easier.

                  Well then your CCW class is meaningless and more of them will be just the same, not to offend but your friends sound like they’re kinda just dumb.

                  Where do they shoot if not the range? Do you live out in the sticks where you can just shoot anywhere? All the gun owners I know are members of a range, I live in a city though.

    • shalafi@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      CDC counts gun and vehicular deaths at about the same, year in and out. Thing is, I can avoid suicide (43% or so), bad people and places. I cannot avoid random people killing me on a stroll or a drive.

      Where’s your passion for dealing with death on the road? Because guns don’t scare me a bit. Driving does.