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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The ATF is leading the fight against unlawful gun dealers, whom President Biden called, \u201cmerchants of death.\u201d 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Garland outlined the Justice Department\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cProtecting our communities from violent crime is a top priority for the Department of Justice and one of our most important responsibilities,\u201d he stated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Biden said the forces will allow federal law enforcement and prosecutors to better coordinate the prosecution of illegal gun trafficking across state lines so \u201cillegal guns sold from the back door of a gun shop in Virginia don’t end up at a murder scene in Baltimore.\u201d If they do show up, it will be easier to trace the gun back to the gun dealer, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In defending his stance of keeping high-rounded weapons out of the public\u2019s hands, Biden joked <\/p>\n\n\n\n
that \u201cno 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.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The president ended the conference by calling upon Republicans and Democrats to keep one another safe. He urged Congress to pass \u201csensible\u201d 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Biden\u2019s \u201coutstanding\u201d and \u201ceminently qualified\u201d 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFolks, this shouldn’t be a red or blue issue, it’s an American issue. We’re not changing the Constitution, we’re enforcing it,\u201d said the president. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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\u2019s plans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The president of Everytown, John Feinblatt, wrote that the plan will \u201cmake good on President Biden\u2019s promise to be the strongest gun safety president in history.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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, \u201cI\u2019m grateful to President Biden for prioritizing ghost guns and honoring survivors with this announcement,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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\u2019s gun-control plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Representative Mike Rogers (R-AL) tweeted, \u201cYou aren\u2019t taking the guns of law-abiding citizens or our right to bear arms, Mr. President.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Governor Greg Abbott of Texas also weighed in and told Fox News, \u201cI think that there is no acceptable way that a president by executive order can infringe upon Second Amendment rights or alter Second Amendment rights.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Two members of the Fieldston community have a generally positive reaction to Biden\u2019s conference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Aditi Patwardhan (V) believes the president\u2019s plan is \u201cdefinitely a step in the right direction\u201d and is \u201cbig on getting protection for underprivileged communities who don\u2019t have the resources to protect themselves\u201d with his focus on community violence intervention programs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, Biden\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s 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\u2019re not gonna use it in the right ways.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Regarding people who are strongly anti-gun control, Aditi thinks they are missing the bigger picture, \u201cof 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\u2019s lost a child.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Marisa Hirschfield (V) feels similarly, \u201cI believe that the constitution is a living document, it\u2019s constantly evolving, it doesn\u2019t mean the same thing today as it did centuries ago.\u201d She called people using the Second Amendment to oppose assault weapon bans as \u201cnot well-versed in the constitution or history.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
She also lacks hope that Biden\u2019s plan will pass through our deeply divided Congress. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI find it very upsetting that people have this pack mentality where it\u2019s just group think and no one\u2019s being self-reliant. I just hope that by the time I\u2019m older, our democracy will look very different. Where people are really thinking, what\u2019s the ethical choice to make, what\u2019s the just choice to make, critically thinking, rather than blindly accepting a party’s idea.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Biden\u2019s final message to rogue dealers was this: \u201cWe’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.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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, \u201cmerchants of death.\u201d Garland announced that the ATF will initiate proceedings to revoke the licenses of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":295,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[318,320,58],"tags":[],"coauthors":[418],"class_list":["post-5523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-politics","category-slider"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/295"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5523"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5523\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5524,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5523\/revisions\/5524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5523"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=5523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}