218
submitted 1 year ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world

Effort continues administration’s work to prevent mass shootings and homicides that primarily affect Black and Latino communities

The Biden administration has announced the nation’s first federal Office of Gun Violence Prevention. In a statement released Thursday, the White House said the office will be overseen by Kamala Harris’s office, directed by Stefanie Feldman, a longtime Biden gun policy adviser, and deputy-directed by Greg Jackson and Rob Wilcox, who have led national prevention efforts through the Community Justice Action Fund and Everytown for Gun Safety respectively.

The creation of this office is a continuation of the administration’s work on preventing high-profile mass shootings and local homicides that primarily affect lower-income Black and Latino communities.

“In the absence of that sorely-needed action, the Office of Gun Violence Prevention along with the rest of my Administration will continue to do everything it can to combat the epidemic of gun violence that is tearing our families, our communities, and our country apart,” Biden said in the announcement.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] sylver_dragon@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It's classic political posturing which is unlikely to result in any real changes. But with the 2024 election coming up, Biden is looking to shore up support from Black and Latino voters. Support among those demographics has been softening and they were instrumental in his win in 2020. While gun violence isn't just a Black or Latino issue, it has historically polled as more important among those groups; so, some sort of token support for it, along with raising Kamala Harris's profile, could be seen as having a net positive effect.

As for any sort of real impact, I'd be surprised if it did anything more than put out reports and news. The single most effective change would be to either move handguns under Title II of the National Firearms Act (which was part of it's original plan) or ban civilian ownership outright. However, the decisions in DC v. Heller and MacDonald V. City of Chicago basically mean that the latter option is off the table. The former option may be more viable, though that could also put the entirety of the National Firearms Act squarely in the cross-hairs of the Supreme Court, which may be a very bad plan right now. Also, any such change to Title II would likely require Congressional action, and the probability of that is probably somewhere between "No" and "Hell No".

Ultimately, I'd expect the new office to be long on grandstanding and short on action. But, if it ends up driving more minority turnout for the 2024 election, it will have accomplished it's unstated goal. After that, it'll lurch along until it gets defunded and/or killed outright the next time a Republican is elected President. And ya, while many of the folks here may hate that idea, it's likely that will happen again and probably sooner than we all think. Regan won in a landslide less than a decade after Nixon left office in disgrace. And Biden's win in 2020 was on razor thin margins. The US is pretty close to evenly divided politically, it only takes a small shift for either party to win.

this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2023
218 points (94.7% liked)

News

23669 readers
3567 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS