The Biden administration and a new layer of paper pushing about gun violence
Joe Biden would like to do something about gun violence.
It seems to me that this is not the first time that he has had this urge, but his current attempt comes after a number of Supreme Court rulings from 2008 onward that have put achieving the traditional goals of the gun control movement in doubt and in the middle of a presidency that has been filled with a lot of small-bore adjustments to the workings of government and the state of our law, but no major reforms or restructurings.
What is new here is the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention that joins other sections of staffers such as the Office of the National Security Advisor, the Office of the First Lady, and similar collections of advisors of varying merit to the president, people whose job it is to star in The West Wing, to appear on Sunday talk shows, and to aid the chief executive. The Office of Gun Violence Prevention has been assigned the task of working with states “to make sure they have the resources needed to advance this life-saving agenda.” What task would that be? The Safer States Agenda comes with a six-point plan.
The first item, naturally enough for Washington, is setting up the new office. This is easy to make fun of, but paper and electrons will not consume themselves, and short of creating a new department in the executive branch, how better for Biden to say that he is really serious than to come up with something new to put on White House stationery.
The remaining five points are simply a copy-and-paste job from any gun control advocate’s social media postings, allowing for a Biden tepidization. Some of the proposals—programs for working with communities to reduce violence, assistance for victims of trauma, aid to persons at risk for suicide—are useful suggestions, if only the Biden administration would do what is necessary to make those work—more on that later—while others might be acceptable, though the current president would likely make a mess of them in constitutional terms. These are calls for disarming perpetrators of domestic violence and other potentially dangerous persons and to encourage safe storage of firearms and the reporting of any that are lost or stolen. The final points, five and six, desire universal background checks—with extra searching through juvenile records—a ban on so-called assault weapons, magazines that hold more rounds than Biden can count without taking off his shoes, and what he refers to as ghost guns, a push to harass gun dealers with requirements for added security and nitpicking on record-keeping, and a path in the law to sue gun makers if their products are abused by criminals.
In other words, more of the same, but it comes in a new bottle. I do see one surprising bit of realism here in that this agenda tacitly admits that Congress will not approve of the things named above. Has Biden worked out that unless the Democrats take significantly more seats in the House and Senate, gun control stands little chance of passing? Perhaps, not that he is willing to do anything like constructing an overall platform to win more votes, but at least this scheme acknowledges that any new restrictions will have to be enacted in the states. It shows no awareness that only a handful will be interested, but enlightenment takes time. The agenda as published also displays no recognition of the many cases working their way up to the Supreme Court, though it may be that this is why the bans and burdens are tacked on at the end. Modifying the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act so as to sue Smith & Wesson, for example, if someone uses and M&P in a crime is always going to be legally dubious, both because gun sales are already heavily regulated and for the same reason that Honda is not liable if a Civic owner drives drunk. What Biden thinks of as assault weapons and large-capacity magazines are likely to be declared protected arms. Red flag laws could work if they come with due process protections, though that is always the sticking point when negotiating with gun control advocates. But perhaps gun dealers might be required to install video cameras, assuming that they do not have some already, without annoying the current justices and some form of background check might be permissible. Who knows?
And then there are the first items, the programs that address health and communities. There is no call here for universal healthcare, no admission that people are having their lives crushed by working two and three minimum-wage jobs to scrape by, no concern that communities are harassed by increasingly militarized police, smashed by poverty, and imprisoned if they attempt some relief in illicit drugs. All that appears in the agenda is a lot of talk about how a lot more talking and a lot more enforcement would make people safer.
Am I the only one to think here that we are dealing with an out-of-touch, old, white man who is yelling at the clouds? Guarantee a living wage and access to higher education and healthcare, treat addiction as a disease instead of a crime, generally end the war on drugs—which is to say, act as if people actually matter—and we can vastly reduce rates of violence in this country.
Continue with the combination of banality and bureaucracy proposed in this new agenda, and violence of all forms, including gun violence, will remain a talking point in fundraising mailers.