Many groups advocating for gun reform and violence prevention have pushed President Biden for the creation of an office in the executive branch focused solely on gun violence, reported The Trace.
Advocates say that Biden’s silence on the matter
suggests he isn’t prioritizing the crisis. At the same time, the president
promised to keep doing everything in his power to “make sure communities are
safer.”
The office and its director would be responsible for
coordinating a government-wide response to a worsening crisis. It would employ
public health strategies, support and evaluate prevention programs, collect
much-needed data, and hold other agencies accountable — with the ultimate goal
of reducing shootings.
Creating such an office would be relatively easy. It
could be accomplished by executive order, without congressional approval, and
the idea is not a new one. Presidents — including Biden — have for decades
created offices or other specialized units to tackle complex challenges. It’s
become a common way for presidents to enact their will, with some clear
advantages — as well as mixed results.
Establishing an office to tackle gun violence would
mean that the federal government’s disparate groups and staffers devoted to the
issue would be forced to collaborate, instead of tackling facets of it in
isolation. So far, the Biden administration has suggested it is taking a
different approach. It has directed several departments — sometimes separately
and sometimes in collaboration — to take steps to address gun
violence through enforcement, regulation,
and funding.
It has pointed to Susan Rice, the head of the Domestic Policy Council, as the
administration’s point person on gun policy, though her portfolio goes far
beyond the issue.
“The President is not standing still while too many
innocent lives are being lost each day due to gun violence,” Biden spokesperson
Michael Gwin told The Trace in an emailed statement, “so he’s going to continue
to push Congress to act on common-sense measures that are currently being
blocked by Senate Republicans, and he’ll continue to use the tools at his
disposal to take further action, such as what we saw with last week’s
announcement.”
Still, advocates are clamoring for an office of gun
violence prevention, saying the Biden administration’s efforts are not enough.
“There’s nobody overseeing how those different pieces fit into a single
puzzle,” said Igor Volsky, the director of Guns Down America, a gun reform
advocacy group, who added that he believes Rice’s portfolio is too large to
give gun violence the attention it deserves.
March For Our Lives, a gun reform group largely
founded by the survivors of the 2018 Parkland, Florida, school shooting, has
been perhaps the most outspoken proponent of appointing a national director of
gun violence prevention.
“We’re very clear on the fact that if no one has gun
violence as their chief priority, it’s going to fall to the wayside,” said
Zeenat Yahya, policy director for March For Our Lives.
Proponents like Yahya and the 36 members of Congress
who wrote a letter to Biden in favor of creating the
office say doing so would signal that the federal government is taking the crisis
seriously and break down silos among a growing list of federal agencies working
on the issue.
The extensive list of players includes the
Department of Justice — and its law enforcement agencies like the FBI and
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives — and the Department
of Health and Human Services, which houses the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention and the National Institutes of Health. Others, like the departments
of Education, State, Veterans Affairs, Labor, Homeland Security, and Commerce,
also fund violence prevention, research gun violence, and regulate firearms.
The advocates for a centralized federal response say
it’s not a big ask. With a few exceptions, Congress has not
challenged the president’s authority to organize and appoint officials
in the executive branch. The office could begin, advocates say, by auditing
existing grant programs across the federal government to find out what’s
working and what isn’t — and then make it easier for nonprofits, cities, and
states to access grant money. It could generate sorely lacking data about gun
violence and the effectiveness of prevention programs, and research and create
public awareness campaigns. With millions in new grants for community violence
intervention programs made available over the last year, a centralized place
evaluating the data from those programs is increasingly important.
“The major thing is that there is something created
that can sustain a comprehensive strategy, and, year-to-year, continue to build
on that strategy,” said Greg Jackson, the executive director of the Community
Justice Action Fund, a nonprofit organization that promotes community-based
strategies for violence prevention.
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