US President Joe Biden on Friday (September 22) announced his administration was setting up a new office of gun violence prevention at the White House.
The aim of the office is to provide coordination on the issue and implement existing laws while working with local authorities to pass gun safety legislation at the state level.
“I’m proud to announce the creation of the first-ever White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, the first office in our history. Created by executive order, I’m determined to send a clear message about how important this issue is to me and to the country,” said Biden during the announcement ceremony at the White House.
Despite the new push, the White House does not have unilateral power to meaningfully limit gun use in the United States, such as by banning assault weapons. Additionally, the new office lacks any kind of enforceable power to tackle the menace of gun violence.
Biden reflected on the same and said the executive action alone was not going to solve the issue.
To be clear, none of these steps alone is going to solve the entirety of the gun violence epidemic. None of them. But together, they will save lives and it’s going to help…help rally the nation a sense of urgency and seriousness of purpose.”
Notably, Vice President Kamala Harris will head the new office, which is likely to lend her more visibility ahead of her re-election bid for the 2024 polls.
“We know true freedom is not possible if people are not safe,” she said during the announcement.
Biden’s way of working around hurdles
If the Biden administration wants to achieve any breakthrough on the ground, it would have to come from Congress. However, with fierce anti-gun regulation Republicans controlling the House of Representatives, there is only so much that the current regime can do.
Experts argue that setting up the new office is perhaps Biden’s way of working around the legislative requirements and imposing certain regulatory and administrative restrictions, despite their limited scope.
Gun violence has long been a sensitive topic in the US, dividing the country into two factions. According to the Gun Violence Archive, a non-governmental organisation, 44,374 people were killed by guns across the United States last year.
Despite gun deaths slowing down slightly this year, at 28,793 for the first eight months, the number remains far too big for the government to not implement any noticeable regulatory change.