Biden gun plan accelerates funding for violence prevention programs
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden announced actions Thursday that aim to pump federal funding into local gun violence prevention programs in the coming months, a distinctive focus on urban areas that also jumps ahead of his administration’s legislative push in the same area.
The action in Washington to address gun violence for years has revolved more around access to guns used in mass shootings at schools or public events, and less around the ways programs can work at an individual level to stop the cycle of violence.
Biden, in an event at the White House Rose Garden on Thursday, called those intervention programs “badly underfunded or not funded at all of late.”
The president last month included $5 billion for those groups in a $2 trillion infrastructure proposal, but isn’t waiting for Congress. Republicans have balked at the size and scope of the full pitch.
Biden’s actions made a slate of changes to 26 existing grant programs over four departments to emphasize that kind of direct work with individuals in racially segregated, high-poverty neighborhoods where a spike in homicides has been the worst.
Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that the Justice Department would make more than $1 billion in grants available that are tied to programs with proven intervention strategies.
“We all recognize that although law enforcement plays an important role, gun violence is not a problem that law enforcement alone can solve,” Garland said. “Communities are an essential partner, an asset and a source of resources and ideas, those who are closest to the problem are a critical part of solving the problem.”