As Congress stalls, Biden makes gun safety a priority with new office

President Joe Biden is creating the first-ever federal office of gun violence prevention, according to two people familiar with the plans.

The office will coordinate efforts across the federal government and will offer help and guidance to states struggling with increasing gun violence, while taking the lead on implementation of the bipartisan gun legislation signed into law last year. Mr. Biden has asked Vice President Kamala Harris to lead the office. 

Ms. Harris, a former prosecutor and state attorney general, has years of experience on the issue and was the natural fit to lead the effort, White House officials said. Adding the new office to her portfolio means Ms. Harris is tasked with some of the highest-profile domestic issues – including voting rights and abortion, as well as the increase in migration to the U.S. But they’re also among the most fraught, difficult to solve, and hard for Democrats to make headway on in Congress.

Mr. Biden tentatively plans to announce the new effort with an event Friday at the White House, said the people, who had direct knowledge of the plans and who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

The office fulfills a key demand of gun safety activists who banded together as a coalition to endorse Mr. Biden for president in 2024, and is an effort by the White House to keep the issue front-and-center as the president pushes for a ban on so-called “assault weapons” and urges Congress to act.

“The creation of an Office of Gun Violence Prevention in the White House will mark a turning point in how our federal government responds to an epidemic that plagues every state and every community in America,” said Kris Brown, president of the gun safety group Brady, which has advocated for the office since 2020.

“Tackling this epidemic will take a whole-of-government approach, and this new office would ensure the executive branch is focused and coordinated on proven solutions that will save lives.”

Greg Jackson, the executive director of the Community Justice Action Fund, and Everytown for Gun Safety’s Rob Wilcox are expected to hold roles in the newly created office, which White House staff secretary Stef Feldman will oversee, the people said. The White House’s plans were first reported by The Washington Post. Among its first directives will be to ensure a federal gun safety law passed last year is being fully implemented. The bipartisan law, the first in decades, was passed following a school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, where a gunman killed 19 students and two teachers.

The 2022 law toughened background checks for the youngest gun buyers, sought to keep firearms from domestic violence offenders, and aimed to help states put in place red flag laws that make it easier to take weapons away from people judged to be dangerous.

Stepped-up FBI background checks have blocked hundreds of transactions of attempted purchasers under the age of 21. Prosecutions have increased for unlicensed gun sellers, and new gun trafficking penalties have been charged in more than 100 cases around the country. Prosecutions for those who sell firearms without a license have doubled.

But there is more to be done, White House officials said. The office will also seek to find ways to stop increasing violence nationwide without any additional action from Congress.

“There are few people who care more about the work of gun violence prevention than President Biden,” said Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., who has drafted legislation with Rep. Maxwell Frost, D-Fla., that would create such an office. “Establishing a White House office dedicated to this fight will save thousands of lives and strengthen the federal government’s implementation of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act.”

Firearms are the No. 1 killer of children in the U.S., and so far this year 220 children younger than 11 have died by guns and 1,049 between the ages of 12 and 17 have died. As of 2020, the firearm mortality rate in the U.S. for those under age 19 is 5.6 per 100,000. The next comparable is Canada, with 0.08 deaths per 100,000.

But Republican support for gun restrictions is slipping a year after Congress passed the most comprehensive firearms control legislation in decades with bipartisan support, according to a recent poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Most Democrats, 92%, want gun laws made stronger, in line with their views in a UChicago Harris/AP-NORC poll conducted in July 2022. But Republican desire for more expansive legislation has dropped to 32% from 49% last summer and independents’ support has also declined slightly to 61% from 72%.

Yet despite the political divide, both sides believe it’s important to reduce mass shootings that plague the nation, the poll found. As of Monday, there have been at least 35 mass killings in the U.S. so far in 2023, leaving at least 171 people dead, not including shooters who died, according to a database maintained by the AP and USA Today in partnership with Northeastern University.

That puts the country on a faster pace for mass killings than in any other year since 2006, according to the database, which defines a mass killing as one in which four or more people are killed, not including the perpetrator, within a 24-hour period.

The president “hears young people all around the country demanding a world in which they do not have to live in fear of gun violence,” said Ms. Feldman. “The president hears them, he agrees with them, and he is acting.”

This story was reported by The Associated Press.