As the nation has begun to reopen following the pandemic, we’ve seen a return to one of the most terrible and upsetting features of pre-pandemic life: reports of new mass shootings every week and a return to endless gun violence. In a rose garden speech on Thursday, President Biden laid out a stark truth about gun violence in American: “This is an epidemic for God’s sake, and it has to stop.” Hours later, there was another mass shooting in Texas.
Alongside attorney general Merrick Garland and with the support of gun violence victim and reform advocate Gabrielle Giffords, Biden laid out executive actions he is implementing to reduce gun violence and called on Congress to do more. Biden’s executive actions will make it harder to get some guns, but it won’t be nearly enough to stem the epidemic of violence tied to firearms.
Biden announced efforts to tighten restrictions on ghost guns: guns that have no serial numbers and are assembled at home from a kit, and are thus incredibly hard to track. He asked the Justice Department to draft rules to regulate stabilizing braces for AR-15s. Also, the justice department will issue an annual report on firearms tracking. He also directed the Justice Department to work with states on vital red flag laws, which would “enable law enforcement and family members to seek court orders to remove firearms from people determined to be a threat to themselves or others.”
And Biden announced he will nominate anti-gun violence advocate and 25-year ATF veteran David Chipman to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. That last one faces a fight for confirmation, but the ATF has been without a permanent director since 2015.
“My job is to protect the American people. Whether Congress acts or not, I will use all the resources at my disposal as president to keep the American people safe from gun violence.” — President Biden pic.twitter.com/k6YXU04CXi
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) April 8, 2021
But this is all just a bandaid on a bullet hole, almost literally. As long as it’s easier to get a gun than it is to vote in some states, this will keep happening. As long as Republicans and the Supreme Court and the Constitution place the outdated idea that owning guns—especially guns that are weapons of war—is somehow important to democracy above the lives of actual people, this will keep happening. Congress has to act, and the people have to make their voices heard here.
Biden said that leaders have “offered plenty of thoughts and prayers” but haven’t done anything. “Enough prayers, time for some action,” the President said. “Gun violence in this country is an epidemic, and it’s an international embarrassment,” the President said, correctly, adding it is “blemish on the character of our nation.”
This is too big of a problem for one person to solve, even if that person is the President. We need real, systemic, even constitutional change and that won’t happen overnight. But it has to happen otherwise people will just keep dying because guns make it so easy to kill.
(via NPR, image: BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)
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