Attorney General Merrick Garland and President Biden gave remarks on June 23 outlining their agenda to combat gun violence. The plan, which focuses largely on new initiatives by the Justice Department and The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), targets unlawful gun dealers.
The ATF is leading the fight against unlawful gun dealers, whom President Biden called, “merchants of death.” Garland announced that the ATF will initiate proceedings to revoke the licenses of dealers violating the law by not conducting required background checks, falsifying records, not responding to trace requests and those refusing to let the ATF conduct inspections. The bureau will also begin to share inspection data with the 16 states that license or regulate firearm dealers themselves and post information about inspection frequency and outcomes publicly.
Garland outlined the Justice Department’s new comprehensive violent crime reduction strategy, which revolves around four principles: to set strategic enforcement policies: to foster trust with and earn legitimacy within communities: to invest in community-based prevention and intervention programs: to measure the results of these efforts through a decrease in violent crime, not by arrests and convictions alone.
“Protecting our communities from violent crime is a top priority for the Department of Justice and one of our most important responsibilities,” he stated.
Both the attorney general and the president emphasized the importance of communication between both local and federal law enforcement across city and state lines. In the next 30 days, the Justice Department will introduce five new cross-jurisdictional law enforcement strike forces to address firearm trafficking corridors. It will confront violence in New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.
Biden said the forces will allow federal law enforcement and prosecutors to better coordinate the prosecution of illegal gun trafficking across state lines so “illegal guns sold from the back door of a gun shop in Virginia don’t end up at a murder scene in Baltimore.” If they do show up, it will be easier to trace the gun back to the gun dealer, he said.
The President also challenged the typical counterargument against gun reform that claims new laws and restrictions as unconstitutional against the Second Amendment. He highlighted the fact that the Second Amendment always limited the types of weapons open to the public and who could own them.
In defending his stance of keeping high-rounded weapons out of the public’s hands, Biden joked
that “no one needs to have a weapon that can fire over 30, 40, 50, even up to 100 rounds unless you think the deer are wearing Kevlar vests or something.”
The president ended the conference by calling upon Republicans and Democrats to keep one another safe. He urged Congress to pass “sensible” gun prevention and violence prevention legislation; he also asked that the Senate reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act and confirm David Chipman as the leader of the ATF.
Biden’s “outstanding” and “eminently qualified” nominee David Chipman, worked as an ATF special agent for 25 years and is currently a senior advisor at Giffords, an organization that advocates for gun control led by former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, who was shot in the head at an event in 2011.
“Folks, this shouldn’t be a red or blue issue, it’s an American issue. We’re not changing the Constitution, we’re enforcing it,” said the president.
The response from gun control organizations has been overwhelmingly positive. Everytown for Gun Safety, a non-profit organization founded by Mike Bloomberg, released a statement supporting Biden’s plans.
The president of Everytown, John Feinblatt, wrote that the plan will “make good on President Biden’s promise to be the strongest gun safety president in history.”
Mia Tretta is a volunteer for Students Demand Action, a sub-organization of Everytown and was a victim of a 2019 shooting at Saugus High School in Santa Clarita, California, “I’m grateful to President Biden for prioritizing ghost guns and honoring survivors with this announcement,” she said.
On November 14, 2019, Nathaniel Berhow, a student at Saugus high school, shot five students, killing two before he killed himself. The gun he used was a ghost gun, a target in Biden’s gun-control plan.
The other side of the nation, specifically Republicans in Congress, have had negative reactions. In April 2021, Biden announced his first executive actions and legislation for gun control. Many members of Congress took their thoughts to Twitter.
Representative Mike Rogers (R-AL) tweeted, “You aren’t taking the guns of law-abiding citizens or our right to bear arms, Mr. President.”
Governor Greg Abbott of Texas also weighed in and told Fox News, “I think that there is no acceptable way that a president by executive order can infringe upon Second Amendment rights or alter Second Amendment rights.”
Two members of the Fieldston community have a generally positive reaction to Biden’s conference.
Aditi Patwardhan (V) believes the president’s plan is “definitely a step in the right direction” and is “big on getting protection for underprivileged communities who don’t have the resources to protect themselves” with his focus on community violence intervention programs.
However, Biden’s plan includes allocating more money towards police departments despite a public outcry to defund them, organizations like the NAACP are concerned about this decision, so is Aditi.
“I think it’s a better idea to give more money to aiding the communities that have experienced gun violence instead of giving money to the police because I feel they’re not gonna use it in the right ways.”
Regarding people who are strongly anti-gun control, Aditi thinks they are missing the bigger picture, “of course, yes, you do have the right to protect yourself, but imagine what the rest of the country is feeling, imagine what every single other family is feeling who’s lost a child.”
Marisa Hirschfield (V) feels similarly, “I believe that the constitution is a living document, it’s constantly evolving, it doesn’t mean the same thing today as it did centuries ago.” She called people using the Second Amendment to oppose assault weapon bans as “not well-versed in the constitution or history.”
She also lacks hope that Biden’s plan will pass through our deeply divided Congress.
“I find it very upsetting that people have this pack mentality where it’s just group think and no one’s being self-reliant. I just hope that by the time I’m older, our democracy will look very different. Where people are really thinking, what’s the ethical choice to make, what’s the just choice to make, critically thinking, rather than blindly accepting a party’s idea.”
Biden’s final message to rogue dealers was this: “We’ll find you, and we will seek your license to sell guns. We’ll make sure you can’t sell death and mayhem on our streets. It’s an outrage. It has to end, and we’ll end it.”
it is fascinating to re-read this article given the law suit filed by the Mexican government against American gun manufacturers (the first of its kind)…..