White House Weighs Executive Orders on Gun Control - The New York Times - 0 views
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With Congress unlikely to move quickly on gun legislation, the White House is pressing ahead with plans for a series of executive orders that President Biden expects to roll out in the coming weeks as a way of keeping up pressure on the issue.
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A day after Mr. Biden called on the Senate to pass a ban on assault weapons and strengthen background checks in response to a pair of mass shootings in the past week that left 18 people dead, White House officials said on Wednesday that while moving legislation on gun safety remained a goal, it would take time, given the vehement opposition from Republicans.
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For now, administration officials have been reaching out to Democrats in the Senate to consult with them about three executive actions.
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Aware that any executive actions on guns will face legal challenges, the White House Counsel’s Office has also been vetting those actions to make sure they can withstand judicial review, officials said.
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“If there’s one thing we learned in this past year is inaction cost lives,” said John Feinblatt, the president of Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun violence prevention organization.
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But Mr. Biden has acknowledged that he does not know what legislation might be possible, even after the recent shootings in Atlanta and Boulder.
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Since the transition, Biden administration officials have met regularly with Mr. Feinblatt and other proponents of gun control to talk about what actions are possible that do not need cooperation from Congress.
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They have also discussed whether to declare gun violence a public health emergency — a move that would free up more funding that could be used to support community gun violence programs and enforcement of current laws.
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Designating gun violence as a public health crisis, Ms. Brown said, would make more money available that would allow for more regular inspections.
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For now, one of the administration’s biggest pushes has been on classifying “ghost guns,” as firearms. Such a classification would require them to be serialized and subject to background checks.
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During the campaign, Mr. Biden promised to create a $900 million, eight-year initiative to fund evidence-based interventions in 40 cities across the country.
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Although there are no plans for any imminent legislative push on guns from a White House that is dealing with crises on multiple fronts, Mr. Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have continued to describe legislative action as an imperative.
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“It is time for Congress to act and stop with the false choices,” she said. “This is not about getting rid of the Second Amendment. It’s simply about saying we need reasonable gun safety laws. There is no reason why we have assault weapons on the streets of a civil society. They are weapons of war. They are designed to kill a lot of people quickly.”
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One would classify as firearms so-called ghost guns — kits that allow a gun to be assembled from pieces. Another would fund community violence intervention programs, and the third would strengthen the background checks system, according to congressional aides familiar with the conversations.
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There’s current discussions and analysis internally of what steps can be taken — that has been ongoing for several weeks, even before these two recent tragedies that, you know, he looks forward to getting an update on and seeing what can be moved forward on that front as well. No one is talking about overturning or changing the Second Amendment. What our focus is on is putting in place common-sense measures that will make our communities safer, make families safer, make kids safer. The majority of the American public supports background checks. The majority of the American public does not believe that anyone needs to have an assault weapon.
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“This isn’t about next week, it’s not about next month, it has to be about today. It has to be immediate.”
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The ideas they have discussed include the Federal Trade Commission evaluating gun ads for safety claims that are false or misleading, the Education Department promoting interventions that prevent students from gaining access to firearms and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention being required to provide reliable data tracking gunshot injuries.