ICYMI: President Biden and Vice President Harris Announce Additional Actions to Reduce Gun Violence and Save Lives
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: September 27, 2024
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ICYMI: PRESIDENT BIDEN AND VICE PRESIDENT HARRIS ANNOUNCE ADDITIONAL ACTIONS TO REDUCE GUN VIOLENCE AND SAVE LIVES
New Executive Order directs federal agencies to combat emerging firearms threats and improve school-based active shooter drills
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Yesterday, President Biden and Vice President Harris announced a new Executive Order directing federal agencies to improve school-based active shooter drills and combat emerging threats from machine gun conversion devices and unserialized, 3D-printed firearms. One year after the establishment of the Office of Gun Violence Prevention, this announcement builds on the many life-saving actions the Biden-Harris Administration has taken to protect Americans from gun violence, as detailed in the Office’s Year One Progress Report.
In his remarks, President Biden enumerated the threat posed by these weapons, saying, “Guns are the number one – hard to believe – they’re the number one killer of children in America. More than any other cause – accidents – more than any other cause. It’s almost unbelievable – it’s sick.”
Since taking office, President Biden and Vice President Harris have taken significant steps to reduce violent crime, including delivering over $15 billion through the American Rescue Plan for law enforcement and community safety initiatives. They have announced more executive actions to reduce gun violence than any previous administration, including through the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act – the most significant gun violence prevention legislation in nearly 30 years.
This year, under the leadership of the Biden-Harris Administration, the United States experienced the largest homicide rate drop in recent history, with a further 17 percent reduction in homicide rates in the first half of 2024 compared to the same period in 2023. Mass shootings have also decreased.
In her remarks, Vice President Harris laid out the work still left to do to end the scourge of gun violence, saying, “For as much as we have accomplished, more must be done. We need more leaders. We need more leaders … in Congress who have the courage to take action, to stand up to the gun lobby, and to put the lives of our children first.”
In response to the Biden-Harris Administration’s announcement, Building Back Together Communications Director Blake Goodman said:
“President Biden and Vice President Harris’ announcement demonstrates their unwavering commitment to protecting American families — and, most notably, our children — from the scourge of gun violence. From addressing the threats posed by ghost guns and bump stocks to improving school safety, these actions are critical steps forward to keeping Americans safe. While MAGA Republicans stand in the way of commonsense, bipartisan-supported gun reforms, President Biden and Vice President Harris continue to take bold action to keep our communities safe, stop the trafficking and sale of unserialized guns and keep children from being traumatized by the very drills intended to keep them safe from an active shooter.”
To learn more about these new measures and additional actions the Biden-Harris Administration will be taking to prevent gun violence, see the White House fact sheet here. Details of President Biden and Vice President Harris’s executive order can be found here.
See notable coverage of yesterday’s announcements below:
CNN: Biden and Harris tout administration’s efforts to curb gun violence
Biden touted measures his administration has taken — including 2022’s Bipartisan Safer Communities Act and $15 billion in funding from the American Rescue Plan to surge funding for law enforcement communities — and pointed at Harris.
“And so many of these, because we had a first-rate prosecutor, who had a ton of experience dealing with these things,” he added, alluding to Harris. “She got a lot of heat from the other guy talking about we’re not helping – we’re the ones funding cops!”
Besides overhauling active-shooter drills in schools, the executive order Biden signed aims to address the threat from emerging gun technologies, including 3D printed and ghost guns.
It also establishes a task force that will assess risks posed by “machine-gun conversion devices,” which can turn ordinary semi-automatic pistols into fully automatic firearms, and unserialized printed firearms, which can be 3D-printed from computer code available online.
Scripps: Biden signs executive order aimed at school shooting drills, machine gun devices
The new executive actions have two primary aims. One is to reduce the trauma and maximize the effectiveness of school shooting drills.
Stand with Parkland President Tony Montalto, whose daughter Gina was killed in the 2018 Parkland shooting, said the new order was an important step to make the reality of shooting drills in schools safer and more effective.
“We believe that there should be active shooter drills in schools. We believe they should be age and developmentally appropriate. However we know what happened to our children. We know that some of them weren’t in the proper position because the drills weren’t done often enough,” Montalto told Scripps News.
“These drills have to happen to keep our students and teachers safe, but we do support the federal guidelines that will be developed and hopefully remind people that they should be age appropriate and as non traumatic as possible.”
The order’s other main objective is to address machine gun conversion devices.
The Thursday press conference came the same week as the one-year anniversary of Biden’s first-of-its-kind Office of Gun Violence Prevention, which Biden slammed Republicans for trying to “defund.” Prior to the Thursday afternoon press conference, the White House unveiled Biden’s plan to take new executive actions aimed at combating “emerging” firearms threats, such as unserialized “ghost guns,” which can be made via a 3-D printer, and improving the manner in which schools prepare for incidents involving an active shooter.
Biden said his new actions would establish a task force that will address the issue of 3-D printed “ghost guns” and machine-gun conversion devices, which are firearm components that can turn a semi-automatic weapon into a fully automatic one. Biden added that the task force will publish a “risk assessment” report within 90 days that will lay out “a strategy to address these emerging firearms threats.”
In addition, Biden is directing the members of his Cabinet to share a report within 110 days that outlines “resources and information for schools to improve active shooter drills, minimize this harm, create age appropriate content and communicate with parents.”
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