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.
Oh, man. Can you imagine the misery of being appointed to this post? Literally half of the government would hate and despise you and would look for ways to undercut you just to have an extra talking point while they stand in the hall talking to Fox News. And to top it off, what could you actually do to affect change? I sympathize with the poor workers of this office.
So…department of education?
Or the EPA, or the CDC, or the IRS, or…
You’d be surprised by how much oil companies hate the DOT.
What next, the FAA and FCC?
Also knowing that you’re guaranteed to be “downsized” on the first day of the next party change in the White House.
And imagine how much security you’ll have to hire to keep yourself from getting shot.
deleted by creator
It’s just a job.
deleted by creator
Wanting to prevent civilian gun violence makes you a Nazi?
deleted by creator
Your response to someone noting that working for this office has inherent risks due to gun nuts existing and someone responding with “it’s just a job” is to compare gun regulations to the Holocaust. You just followed up a sentence where you said this isn’t about guns with two questions about guns. I think you either don’t understand what the Nazis did or you’re arguing in bad faith. My guess is both.
Also, I don’t have to have a solution to gun violence to point out you’re making a stupid and dangerous argument. Calling people who work on gun safety Nazis in response to someone noting that gun nuts make their job dangerous proves the point.
deleted by creator
I don’t think you understand.
People saying Nazis were just doing they’re job are doing that to alleviate them of any responsibility of their work.
I’m saying it’s just a job to highlight how these people probably don’t care about what they’re doing so long as they’re getting paid. As in, who cares if a bunch of strangers hate you so long as you’re getting paid. That’s actually par for the course for a lot of work.
deleted by creator
Half?
How few people do you think work for the government?
Next time a Republican takes office they will set this department’s budget to 1 dollar, just like the consumer protection bureau. It will get to the point that parts of the government will only work when dems are in charge.
I was really curious to learn more about CFPB’s financing, I found an article about Trump slashing their budget by a quarter but I haven’t been able to find anything about their funding year by year.
It’s turbo fucked if they haven’t refunded them because they’ve returned billions to consumers by prosecuting fraudulent organizations like Wells Fargo!!
That’s “Starve the Beast” politics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast
Everyone should know what this is and how and why it is done.
In short, Republicans want to starve a department of funding to a level below which they can not properly function. Then they can claim that agency isn’t doing it’s job, so we might as well cut it altogether. They are trying to set up these departments and programs to fail and can come in and claim they are saving taxpayers money. What they are really doing is making it easier for corporations and the ultra rich to pollute or side-step their tax obligations. Kind of hard to claim someone is a tax cheat if there isn’t an IRS to audit them. Same with the EPA, Amtrak, USPS, DoEducation, and a host of other departments.
Once again, we can thank Reagan for this mess.
They’ve got to earn their $16 million a year from the gun lobby by doing even less than they did back before Sandy Hook, when it was only $8 million a year.
Isn’t it just grand to look back on the last 365 days of gun violence and see what figures people put on it? Tens of thousands of lives. Hundreds of them children.
The pro-gun crowd will bury them just to avoid inconvenience. They don’t want to wait for their guns, pass a background check, demonstrate they know how to responsibly handle them or store them securely.
Sure, they’ll jerk themselves raw as they publicly congratulate themselves for doing any of those, but the moment someone wants to turn “suggestions” into “laws”, they’re all too happy to be represented by overweight men stuffed into plate carriers.
For the politicians and manufacturers though, it’s strictly business.
Republicans get $16 million a year and a bloc of voters who will tolerate all manner of horrific acts, as long as they happen to other people.
In return, they insist that we mustn’t change a thing until every man, woman and child in America has been completely cured of mental illness, to a level far beyond current medical science, so perfectly that nobody ever relapses and all in the few days it takes to load up on semi-automatic firearms.
Not only can you buy their souls, they’re not even that expensive.
deleted by creator
“Banana Republican” while Dementia Joe didn’t even leave his basement to run.
Why would Republicans axe more money for cops? This has always been what they wanted
deleted by creator
Whoo boy, that’s gonna set off the crazies. And finally Rick Scott will know which Federal agency he wants to eliminate when asked the question. I don’t see this as particularly effective or constructive going into an election year. But what do I know?
If they focus on policy that isn’t gun control it will help. If they only exist to push gun control you’re prolly right. Either way, gun stores will prolly win when the nutters go buy more rifles.
Yep going harder on gun control stuff is going to do nothing but lose votes for Democrats. Because if you’re already anti-gun then you’re voting [D] anyway right? Personally I’m never voting for any politician who proposes to limit any freedoms. I’m pro-freedom only. I don’t really have much to vote for these days.
It’s a nice thought.
To go along with all the prayers.
An office of prayers is strictly forbidden by the first amendment.
3, 2, 1…here come the gun nuts…
As expected every time guns are brought up in a political context, the comments are already full of people talking past each other while ignoring the real issues.
It is exactly as difficult to get rid of guns in this country as it would be to get rid of the electoral college, and the electoral college has done thing like lead directly to the covid pandemic being far worse than it had to be because Trump fired the guy we had in position to warn everyone if China leaked a pandemic.
Instead of discussing that, all you’re going to find in a thread like this is back and forth about getting rid of guns (nearly impossible) or decrying the department as redundant (the DHS is proof this is also meaningless) or the like.
If something is not realistically achievable in the short term, that means we shouldn’t be able to talk about it?
I disagree. If we limit discourse only to the immediately achievable we stop talking about how things should be, and how best to get there. Sometimes change happens overnight, sometimes it takes decades. It’s worth talking about.
It definitely feels like a lost cause banning guns. It’s part of the culture. When we banned guns in Australia after one single mass shooting, I don’t believe Australia had nearly as much of a gun loving culture. It was still seen as a tool in the country side for hunting and such. I don’t know the answer to changing culture. It’ll take generations possibly. Smoking was seen like an everyday thing in the 60s. Now it’s disgusting. Perception can change eventually.
Most people are not asking to “get rid of guns.” Most people are asking for restrictions that keep people safe, not least our school children, and a ban on military-style weapons like AR-15s. That’s not unreasonable nor impossible.
AR-15s are functionally the same as the majority of rifles, they’re semi automatic. Calling AR-15s military style immediately shows you know almost nothing about guns.
We’d have a better return on our investment banning handguns which are used in more deadly non-police shootings by a whole fucking lot.
Yeah, I’d call AR-15s military style. It’s ok if you don’t. No matter what you call them, it’s idiotic that random people run around with them.
Can you define what about them makes you consider them military style?
And what are you thinking of when you say “random people running around with them”, because legally anyone who purchases them is required to pass an FBI background check to make sure they’re not a felon, among other things.
I consider semi-automatic and automatic firearms to be military style.
By “random” I just mean anyone who can pass a background check. The easy access to weapons is what stands out in American society when it comes to gun violence.
I consider semi-automatic and automatic firearms to be military style.
So just to be clear, that’s 99% of guns, and automatic is essentially already out of the equation since nobody makes or sells those anymore because of ATF regulations. Virtually all modern guns are semi automatic.
You do know AR-15s that consumers can buy are already not automatic right?
IMO a more robust mental and other healthcare system and social services would go a lot farther in preventing these kinds of things. Identifying and fixing/containing the people that are so deranged that they would kill others would stop most killings and the kinds of things that lead up to it. Most of the gun crime is a symptom of a much larger problem of people with little to no support lashing out.
You think Americans are just that much more mentally ill than people in every other developed country on earth? Of course not. The one thing that stands out in the US is easy access to weapons.
Yes I do but that’s beside the point. The vast majority of gun owners never do anything criminal with them. It’s people with mental health problems who snap or criminals who’re using them to perpetrate other crimes (many of whom would probably not be criminals if they had proper social support.
Countries with strict gun control haven’t solved the root of the problem. People can still be dangerous without guns and if we can’t trust someone to own a gun we really shouldn’t trust them to have free reign to interact with society without supervision either.
deleted by creator
Every gun shoots lead all the same. It doesn’t matter what “style” it is.
So it shouldn’t matter if people are only allowed to own black powder muskets then, right?
deleted by creator
I though we were switching over to environmentally friendly tungsten?
deleted by creator
Every gun shoots lead all the same. It doesn’t matter what “style” it is.
Then banning some of them should pose no problem for gun enthusiasts.
deleted by creator
Some weapons, including AR-15s, are specifically designed to kill as many people as possible in as short a time as possible. Makes a big difference.
Wait, who’s talking about banning guns? Literally nobody in the thread has mentioned it and I did read all the comments. I even did a quick ctrl+f for keywords just to make sure and found nothing.
Look up
Where exactly? If that comment isn’t older than my comment or comes as a result of the person I was replying to planting the seed I’m probably gonna block you
Lol alright bro, please do it.
So where exactly?
You sure you read the comments? Lmao.
“After months of research, we have written a 1000 page report proving the solution is fewer guns.”
Republicans: “MORE GUNS! ARM EVERYONE!”
Removed by mod
Why does America have some of the highest rates of gun violence in any of the developed countries, Blamemeta?
I don’t know SMCF, why specifically ‘gun’? Is the tool more important than the act?
Are you able to answer the question I asked or not?
Removed by mod
I asked about gun violence on a thread about Biden creating a federal office of gun violence.
I’ll assume you are unable to answer the question, Blamemeta.
Removed by mod
deleted by creator
Removed by mod
From the WaPo article:
The new office will report up through Stefanie Feldman, the White House staff secretary and a longtime Biden policy aide who has worked on the firearms issue for years, the people said. Feldman previously worked on the Domestic Policy Council and still oversees the gun policy portfolio at the White House.
So it’s going to be a purely policy role within the White House? Well that’s disappointing. I was hoping it was going to be somewhere in HHS, or at least DoJ.
That would likely require explicit funding. Yes this is just to make a headline. He could actually direct the ATF to follow up on straw purchases, improve data sync with NICS and other federal databases if he wanted to do something meaningful.
Great idea, but I do not have faith that this will be well executed.
If the democrats had the same drive as their republican counterparts, this would be a better country.
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
The only reason the GOP is as powerful as it is is because the Dems are so fucking terrible at playing the damn game. Pick your battles. Good idea or not - Biden is trying real hard to lose this election.
The biggest single-issue voting blocks in the county are pro-lifers and pro-gun people. Even if most people want stronger gun control and better abortion access, they don’t base the entirety of their votes on those positions. It’s not like Dems or moderates who are anti-gun would vote for Trump or Biden were pro-gun.
The only time being pro gun-control is advantageous is in a primary, which Biden doesn’t have to worry about. In the general election it’s entirely detrimental to a campaign.
about time
deleted by creator
Pedophiles don’t care about the law either it seems, so would you say we should just get rid of all laws pertaining to that?
Its already illegal to murder, so adding additional crimes to gun possetion is essentially a proxy for making murder double illegal. If a criminal doesn’t care about murder laws, possession laws aren’t going to bother them.
Your metaphor would be more like saying: pedophilia is already illegal, make giving candy to children who aren’t yours with intent to abduct illegal too. Essentially make pedophilia double illegal (in this instance).
Its already illegal to murder
Why? Murderers don’t care about the law
So we can charge them and put them away from society. Making a crime more illegaler and increasing the punishment for it doesn’t reduce crime rates.
So we can charge them and put them away from society.
What do you mean? I thought criminals could simply ignore all laws, are you saying it’s possible for laws to have some effect after all?
They can ignore them and still murder yes. It happens in the 10s of thousands per year in the US alone. Once you’re caught the law lets society punish these individuals, but the law didn’t pervent the murder. Ergo making it double illegal won’t help.
Okay okay.
So. Instead of inserting layers of metaphors and renaming a gun ban to “making murder double illegal”, what if we just called it what it is, “making gun ownership illegal”
You are taking it for granted that it will always definitely be okay to own a gun as long as you don’t commit a crime with it. What we are discussing currently is whether ownership should be a crime in and of itself. On the most fundamental level, do you think a law directly targeting gun ownership could possibly have any effect?
And before this turns into a whole thing, it may come as a shock for you to learn that I do not personally support such a ban. The article you listed says in quite plain language that higher wages and better opportunity is what decrease crime, after all. The only thing I take issue with right now is the ludicrous assertion that the law has no effect on “criminals” because they will simply break the law.
I can guarantee you a gun ban would reduce the number of guns, and the strategy of trying to gaslight people into believing it wouldn’t is fundamentally ineffective. If you support ownership then you should want to nip these arguments in the bud as well, as they’re only going to backfire
heres the thing though - criminals arent known for caring about laws or federal offices
Here’s the thing though - putting basic steps in place to make it more difficult for criminals to get a gun isn;t a bad idea.
That’s why we already have federal background checks required for all retail purchases of guns. Requiring those for private sales is basically impossible to enforce since anyone can sell anything they want in private as long as they don’t create a record of it.
That’s just blatantly false. Actual scientific study on gun violence has found that gun restrictions, such as the assault weapons ban, had meaningful reductions in gun crime in the years following its implementation.
Most guns used in crimes are obtained legally.
Exactly. Didn’t that one kid in that one shooting walk into the shop and ask for tons of ammo and nobody asked questions before cashing him out? I forget which shooting that was, but I could almost bet that applies to more than one school shooter at this point.
deleted by creator
Please show me examples of criminals following the law… I’ll wait
deleted by creator
Ok, now you’re starting to get the point. If I criminal wanted to rob a store or invade someone’s home, what’s stopping them from using a gun? They certainly won’t stop using one because it just happens to be illegal.
deleted by creator
If the Dems would drop their anti-gun fight, they would win every election in a landslide and we wouldn’t have the ridiculous government we have now.
EDIT: Lemmy and guns in a nutshell right here.
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.
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.
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.
I’ve thought about this.
This ought to be good.
If they couldn’t use guns, they’d use cars
LOL
A swing and a miss.
Bastille Day says what?
Quoi?
They already do use cars.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle-ramming_attack
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Toronto_van_attack
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waukesha_Christmas_parade_attack
Sorry information you don’t like isn’t worth considering. Probably because you’re biased.
Do you think these people would’ve preferred to use a gun? Probably.
The only rational take here is “but that would still certainly result in fewer deaths overall” that the other guy said. Which is true, but it still won’t alleviate attacks like these for the reasons I mentioned.
deleted by creator
Not really. You’re just upset someone is saying banning guns won’t eliminate the problem of mass murderers.
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.
Bombs are not people’s weapons of choice because they require some knowledge to build and pose a substantial risk to the amateur builder.
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!)
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
“It’s worth the dead children to get elected” isn’t the best of campaign slogans
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
Hopefully he can stay awake and read the teleprompter, and do exactly as he’s told.
Weird, I read an article on Breitbart today saying he’s the most dangerous man in America, ever.
Shit if the conservative freaks actually understood the reality of the situation.
What is the reality of the situation, Shadywack?
Biden’s no danger, the 1%'ers he works for is, just like every other puppet that gets
electedselected.deleted by creator
Bernie Sanders, and the superdelegates can fuck right off along with the party rules that make it such a cunty system.
I see where the wack part of your name comes from.
I guess I’m wack for disliking both Trump and Biden. I must not exist in this universe.
Your words, not mine.
I was commenting more on your theory but I won’t tell you how to think.
Honest question: has he ever fallen asleep at the job? Because it seems that Trump came up with the moniker to slander him and everybody started pretending that he had
Everytime I see footage of him lately, he doesn’t know where he is, where he’s suppose to be, and he’s obviously asking what he’s suppose to do.
deleted by creator
Holy shit, you’re right 😂
Which mountain of videos on Youtube would you like first? The ones from CNN or all the right wing nutjobs channels like “Don’t walk, run”?
Here’s a good CNN video where Anderson Cooper is salty that Republicans are calling it out, but are we seriously pretending that it’s normal for Presidents to parrot whatever shit gets handed to them?
deleted by creator
If only anything we said or did mattered, and we could’ve had a quality candidate actually win nominations for either party. I know where I was, and that was actively campaigning for Sanders only to watch the superdelegates fuck us all over despite him leading in popular votes.
We watched it happen on the Republican side too back in 2008 with Ron Paul. So I don’t think it really matters where any “normal people” are when we get fuckheads like Trump and absent minded grandpa’s like Biden. It seems like we already knew, and picked the right candidates, and just get fucked over anyway. 'Merica
deleted by creator
Can you link to all this footage?
I sure can, the question is can you accept that the last two Presidents are dipshit puppets?
Receipts first, please
Here’s a good one, https://youtu.be/aL-wyLLzuYA?si=Sv1lcbcuc8GsFNzX
bumbling, clueless, and barely knows where he even is, and besides he just fucking looooooooooooooves China, I’m surprised we don’t see the shape of Xi Jin Ping’s dick embossed in one of his cheeks he sucked that dick so hard.
deleted by creator
Wait, what? What is this about? I’m asking about all this “recent footage” of the guy sleeping on the job and all I get is some biased YouTuber really stretching the truth and blatantly misrepresenting pieces of footage for what could have many interpretations about him. I could gather footage of most world leaders alive who have fumbled, tripped, or randomly paused mid-speech, edit it and make them look really dumb. But all I’m seeing is that what you’re accusing Biden of is simply not true and that it comes from Trump. The topic is the moniker “sleepy Joe” in case we forgot what we’re talking about.
Listen, I’m not here to take the man’s side–he’s not even my president. But you guys really seem like you get off on making things up about him for the sake of it. Let’s be grown ups and speak about things that have actually happened instead of falling for the lying orange man’s circlejerk. Why is Biden “sleepy”? My question was dead-simple.
