BIDEN ISSUES GUN CONTROL ACTIONS
Mass shootings spur administration’s first steps on restrictions
After several mass shootings on his watch, President Joe Biden has announced his administration’s first steps toward greater gun regulation, declaring that “progress, even on this most difficult of issues, is possible.”
The executive actions are limited — many of the goals advocated by gun safety groups would require legislation from Congress, which remains stalemated on gun issues. But Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and Attorney General Merrick Garland portrayed the moves as a significant first step.
“Enough, enough, enough,” Biden declared, noting that more than 100 Americans on average die from shootings each day. “This is an epidemic, for God’s sake, and it has to stop.”
Here’s what’s in the plan:
Ghost guns
The action with the greatest potential to limit the number of new guns in circulation is a proposal to require background checks for so-called ghost guns.
The label refers to do-ityourself kits, widely sold, which allow a purchaser to manufacture a functioning weapon at home using readily accessible tools. Because existing rules don’t consider such kits to fall within the definition of “firearms” under federal law, they are not required to have a serial number, unlike completed guns.
That means they can’t be traced by law enforcement agencies, which is why they’re called ghosts. For the same reason, purchasers don’t need to go through a background check to buy one.
Biden’s plan directs the Justice Department to come up with a rule that defines the kits as firearms under federal law. That would require purchasers to go through a background check.
Violence prevention
The number of shootings
has risen sharply in many major cities around the county in the past year, as Biden acknowledged.
“Gun violence is not a problem that law enforcement alone can solve,” Garland said.
That’s led to increased administration support for what the government calls community violence intervention programs.
Violence prevention programs aim to resolve disputes before they turn violent, connect people at high
risk for violence with job openings or training and take other steps, such as working with shooting victims while they’re in hospitals to head off retaliatory cycles.
Administration officials say those strategies have shown promising results where they have been tried, but the programs have been chronically under-funded. The administration aims to reverse that by investing $5 billion over the next eight years as part of Biden’s infrastructure plan.
While Congress works through that plan, Biden hopes to provide money from existing programs. He’s directing some two dozen federal agencies to examine their programs to see which could be used to support violenceprevention efforts.
‘Red flag’ laws
In recent years, 19 states, including California, have passed “red flag” laws. Those statutes allow family members or law enforcement agencies to go to court to get an order temporarily taking guns away from someone who is suffering from mental problems or other issues that would make them a danger to themselves or others.
Biden is not proposing a federal red flag law, although the White House says he would support one. Instead, his administration will propose a model statute that states could adopt. Backers hope that the existence of a model will make it easier for states to pass such measures, which has been true in a wide range of other areas of law.
Stabilizing braces
The gunman who shot and killed 10 people last month in Boulder, Colo., used a pistol equipped with a stabilizing brace. Such a brace effectively transforms a pistol into a short-barreled rifle, making it more accurate while still allowing it to be more easily concealed.
Short-barreled rifles have been subject to regulation for years, including a $200 tax and federal registration. Biden’s plan directs the Justice Department to come up with a new rule within 60 days that would make such stabilizing devices subject to similar restrictions.
Weapons trafficking
Biden will direct the ATF, the government’s main agency that regulates gun sales, to produce an annual report on trafficking of firearms. ATF produced such a report in 2000, but trafficking patterns have changed significantly since then, and the report hasn’t been comprehensively updated, White House officials say.