President Joe Biden, in his first gun management measures since taking workplace, introduced a half-dozen government actions Thursday aimed toward addressing a proliferation of gun violence throughout the nation that he known as an “epidemic and a global embarrassment.””The concept that we now have so many individuals dying ever single day from gun violence in America is a blemish on our character as a nation,” Biden stated throughout remarks on the White Home.Members of the family whose kids have been killed on the Sandy Hook, Connecticut, college bloodbath in 2012 and the capturing at Marjory Stoneman Douglas Excessive College in Parkland, Florida, in 2018 attended the listening to, and Biden thanked them for attending, saying he understood it will remind them of the terrible days after they received the calls.He assured them, “We’re completely decided to make change.”Biden’s Thursday announcement delivers on a pledge the president made final month to take what he termed instant “commonsense steps” to deal with gun violence, after a collection of mass shootings drew renewed consideration to the difficulty. His announcement got here the identical day as yet one more, this one in South Carolina, the place 5 individuals have been killed.Biden emphasised the scope of the issue: Between the mass killings in Atlanta therapeutic massage companies and the Colorado grocery retailer capturing final month, there have been greater than 850 extra shootings that killed 250 and injured 500 within the U.S., he stated.However Thursday’s announcement underscores the constraints of Biden’s government energy to behave on weapons. His orders tighten laws on home made weapons and supply extra sources for gun-violence prevention however fall far in need of the sweeping gun-control agenda he laid out on the marketing campaign path.Certainly, on Thursday Biden reiterated his urge Congress to behave, calling on the Senate to take up Home-passed measures closing background examine loopholes. He additionally stated Congress ought to cross the Violence Towards Ladies Act, get rid of authorized exemptions for gun producers and ban assault weapons and excessive capability magazines. Biden stated”This isn’t a partisan challenge among the many American individuals,” Biden insisted. “They’ve supplied loads of ideas and prayers, members of Congress, however they’ve handed not a single new federal legislation to cut back gun violence,” he stated. “Sufficient prayers, time for some motion.”Whereas Biden asserted that he is “prepared to work with anybody to get it executed,” gun management measures face slim prospects in an evenly divided Senate, the place Republicans stay near-unified in opposition to most proposals.Biden was joined on the occasion by Vice President Kamala Harris and Lawyer Common Merrick Garland. Many of the actions he introduced will undergo the Justice Division.Biden is tightening laws of patrons of “ghost weapons” — home made firearms that often are assembled from components and milled with a metal-cutting machine and infrequently lack serial numbers used to hint them. It’s authorized to construct a gun in a house or a workshop and there’s no federal requirement for a background examine.The Justice Division will challenge a proposed rule requiring such gun kits be handled as firearms beneath the Gun Management Act, which might require that the components be made with serial numbers and that patrons obtain background checks.A second proposed rule, anticipated inside 60 days, will tighten laws on pistol-stabilizing braces, just like the one utilized by the Boulder, Colorado, shooter in a rampage final month that left 10 lifeless. The rule will designate pistols used with stabilizing braces as short-barreled rifles, which require a federal license to personal and are topic to a extra thorough software course of and a $200 tax.The division is also publishing mannequin laws inside 60 days that’s meant to make it simpler for states to undertake their very own “crimson flag” legal guidelines. Such legal guidelines permit for people to petition a court docket to permit the police to confiscate weapons from an individual deemed to be a hazard to themselves or others.The division additionally will start to offer extra knowledge on firearms trafficking, beginning with a brand new complete report on the difficulty. The administration says that hasn’t been executed in additional than 20 years.The Biden administration may also make investments in neighborhood violence intervention packages, that are aimed toward lowering gun violence in city communities, throughout 5 federal businesses.Biden argued that gun violence was additionally an enormous financial pressure, citing the prices from hospital visits, authorized charges, and the price of holding individuals in jail and offering remedy to victims and others. A majority of firearm deaths are from suicides.Biden can also be nominating David Chipman, a former federal agent and adviser on the gun management group Giffords, to be director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.The ATF is at present run by an appearing director, Regina Lombardo. Gun-control advocates have emphasised the importance of this place in implementing gun legal guidelines, and Chipman is for certain to win reward from this group. Throughout his time as a senior coverage adviser with Giffords, he spent appreciable effort pushing for better regulation and enforcement on ghost weapons, adjustments to the background examine system and measures to cut back the trafficking of unlawful firearms.Chipman spent 25 years as an agent on the ATF, the place he labored on stopping a trafficking ring that despatched unlawful firearms from Virginia to New York, and served on the ATF’s SWAT crew. Chipman is a gun proprietor.He’s an explosives skilled and was among the many crew concerned in investigating the Oklahoma Metropolis bombing and the primary World Commerce Middle bombing. He additionally was concerned in investigating a collection of church bombings in Alabama within the Nineteen Nineties. He retired from the ATF in 2012.The White Home truth sheet stated Chipman has labored “to advance commonsense gun security legal guidelines.”Throughout his marketing campaign, Biden promised to prioritize new gun management measures as president, together with enacting common background examine laws, banning on-line gross sales of firearms and the manufacture and sale of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. However gun-control advocates have stated that whereas they have been heartened by indicators from the White Home that they took the difficulty severely, they have been dissatisfied by the shortage of early motion.With the announcement of the brand new measures, advocates did laud Biden’s first strikes.”Every of those government actions will begin to deal with the epidemic of gun violence that has raged all through the pandemic, and start to make good on President Biden’s promise to be the strongest gun security president in historical past,” stated John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Security.Feinblatt particularly praised the transfer to control ghost weapons, which he stated “will undoubtedly save numerous lives,” and he lauded Chipman as an “invaluable level particular person” within the combat in opposition to unlawful gun trafficking.For years, federal officers have been sounding the alarm about an rising black marketplace for home made, military-style semi-automatic rifles and handguns. Ghost weapons have more and more turned up at crime scenes and lately have been turning up increasingly more when federal brokers are buying weapons in undercover operations from gang members and different criminals.A gunman who killed his spouse and 4 others in Northern California in 2017 had been prohibited from proudly owning firearms, however he constructed his personal to skirt the court docket order earlier than his rampage. And in 2019, a young person used a home made handgun to fatally shoot two classmates and wound three others at a faculty in suburban Los Angeles.___Associated Press author Lisa Marie Pane in Boise, Idaho, contributed to this report.
President Joe Biden, in his first gun control measures since taking workplace, introduced a half-dozen government actions Thursday aimed toward addressing a proliferation of gun violence throughout the nation that he known as an “epidemic and a global embarrassment.”
“The concept that we now have so many individuals dying ever single day from gun violence in America is a blemish on our character as a nation,” Biden stated throughout remarks on the White Home.
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Members of the family whose kids have been killed on the Sandy Hook, Connecticut, college bloodbath in 2012 and the capturing at Marjory Stoneman Douglas Excessive College in Parkland, Florida, in 2018 attended the listening to, and Biden thanked them for attending, saying he understood it will remind them of the terrible days after they received the calls.
He assured them, “We’re completely decided to make change.”
Biden’s Thursday announcement delivers on a pledge the president made final month to take what he termed instant “commonsense steps” to deal with gun violence, after a collection of mass shootings drew renewed consideration to the difficulty. His announcement got here the identical day as yet one more, this one in South Carolina, the place 5 individuals have been killed.
Biden emphasised the scope of the issue: Between the mass killings in Atlanta therapeutic massage companies and the Colorado grocery retailer capturing final month, there have been greater than 850 extra shootings that killed 250 and injured 500 within the U.S., he stated.
However Thursday’s announcement underscores the constraints of Biden’s government energy to behave on weapons. His orders tighten laws on home made weapons and supply extra sources for gun-violence prevention however fall far in need of the sweeping gun-control agenda he laid out on the marketing campaign path.
Certainly, on Thursday Biden reiterated his urge Congress to behave, calling on the Senate to take up Home-passed measures closing background examine loopholes. He additionally stated Congress ought to cross the Violence Towards Ladies Act, get rid of authorized exemptions for gun producers and ban assault weapons and excessive capability magazines. Biden stated
“This isn’t a partisan challenge among the many American individuals,” Biden insisted.
“They’ve supplied loads of ideas and prayers, members of Congress, however they’ve handed not a single new federal legislation to cut back gun violence,” he stated. “Sufficient prayers, time for some motion.”
Whereas Biden asserted that he is “prepared to work with anybody to get it executed,” gun management measures face slim prospects in an evenly divided Senate, the place Republicans stay near-unified in opposition to most proposals.
Biden was joined on the occasion by Vice President Kamala Harris and Lawyer Common Merrick Garland. Many of the actions he introduced will undergo the Justice Division.
Biden is tightening laws of patrons of “ghost weapons” — home made firearms that often are assembled from components and milled with a metal-cutting machine and infrequently lack serial numbers used to hint them. It’s authorized to construct a gun in a house or a workshop and there’s no federal requirement for a background examine.
The Justice Division will challenge a proposed rule requiring such gun kits be handled as firearms beneath the Gun Management Act, which might require that the components be made with serial numbers and that patrons obtain background checks.
A second proposed rule, anticipated inside 60 days, will tighten laws on pistol-stabilizing braces, just like the one utilized by the Boulder, Colorado, shooter in a rampage final month that left 10 lifeless. The rule will designate pistols used with stabilizing braces as short-barreled rifles, which require a federal license to personal and are topic to a extra thorough software course of and a $200 tax.
The division is also publishing mannequin laws inside 60 days that’s meant to make it simpler for states to undertake their very own “crimson flag” legal guidelines. Such legal guidelines permit for people to petition a court docket to permit the police to confiscate weapons from an individual deemed to be a hazard to themselves or others.
The division additionally will start to offer extra knowledge on firearms trafficking, beginning with a brand new complete report on the difficulty. The administration says that hasn’t been executed in additional than 20 years.
The Biden administration may also make investments in neighborhood violence intervention packages, that are aimed toward lowering gun violence in city communities, throughout 5 federal businesses.
Biden argued that gun violence was additionally an enormous financial pressure, citing the prices from hospital visits, authorized charges, and the price of holding individuals in jail and offering remedy to victims and others. A majority of firearm deaths are from suicides.
Biden can also be nominating David Chipman, a former federal agent and adviser on the gun management group Giffords, to be director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
The ATF is at present run by an appearing director, Regina Lombardo. Gun-control advocates have emphasised the importance of this place in implementing gun legal guidelines, and Chipman is for certain to win reward from this group. Throughout his time as a senior coverage adviser with Giffords, he spent appreciable effort pushing for better regulation and enforcement on ghost weapons, adjustments to the background examine system and measures to cut back the trafficking of unlawful firearms.
Chipman spent 25 years as an agent on the ATF, the place he labored on stopping a trafficking ring that despatched unlawful firearms from Virginia to New York, and served on the ATF’s SWAT crew. Chipman is a gun proprietor.
He’s an explosives skilled and was among the many crew concerned in investigating the Oklahoma Metropolis bombing and the primary World Commerce Middle bombing. He additionally was concerned in investigating a collection of church bombings in Alabama within the Nineteen Nineties. He retired from the ATF in 2012.
The White Home truth sheet stated Chipman has labored “to advance commonsense gun security legal guidelines.”
Throughout his marketing campaign, Biden promised to prioritize new gun management measures as president, together with enacting common background examine laws, banning on-line gross sales of firearms and the manufacture and sale of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. However gun-control advocates have stated that whereas they have been heartened by indicators from the White Home that they took the difficulty severely, they have been dissatisfied by the shortage of early motion.
With the announcement of the brand new measures, advocates did laud Biden’s first strikes.
“Every of those government actions will begin to deal with the epidemic of gun violence that has raged all through the pandemic, and start to make good on President Biden’s promise to be the strongest gun security president in historical past,” stated John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Security.
Feinblatt particularly praised the transfer to control ghost weapons, which he stated “will undoubtedly save numerous lives,” and he lauded Chipman as an “invaluable level particular person” within the combat in opposition to unlawful gun trafficking.
For years, federal officers have been sounding the alarm about an rising black marketplace for home made, military-style semi-automatic rifles and handguns. Ghost weapons have more and more turned up at crime scenes and lately have been turning up increasingly more when federal brokers are buying weapons in undercover operations from gang members and different criminals.
A gunman who killed his spouse and 4 others in Northern California in 2017 had been prohibited from proudly owning firearms, however he constructed his personal to skirt the court docket order earlier than his rampage. And in 2019, a young person used a home made handgun to fatally shoot two classmates and wound three others at a faculty in suburban Los Angeles.
___
Related Press author Lisa Marie Pane in Boise, Idaho, contributed to this report.
