Biden plan targets lawbreaking gun dealers
WASHINGTON >> President Joe Biden announced new efforts Wednesday to stem a rising national tide of violent crime, declaring the federal government is “taking on the bad actors doing bad things to our communities.” But questions persist about how effective the efforts can be in what could be a turbulent summer.
Crime rates have risen after plummeting during the initial months of the coronavirus pandemic, creating economic hardship and anxiety. Biden’s plan focuses on providing money to cities that need more police, offering community support and most of all cracking down on gun violence and those supplying illegal firearms.
“These merchants of death are breaking the law for profit,” Biden said. “If you willfully sell a gun to someone who’s prohibited, my message to you is this: We’ll find you and we’ll seek your license to sell guns. We’ll make sure you can’t sell death and mayhem on our streets.”
But there are also tricky politics at play, and Biden’s plan shows how few options the Democratic president has on the issue.
The steps he outlined are aimed at going hard after gun dealers who break federal law and establishing strike forces in several cities to help stop weapons trafficking. He also said he would seek more money for the agency that tracks the nation’s guns.
But the rest of his new strategy boils down mostly to suggestions for beleaguered localities. He’s encouraging cities to invest some of their COVID-19 relief funds into policing and pushing alternative crime reduction steps such as increased community support and summer jobs for teenagers — often both targets and perpetrators of violence.
The president’s remarks came amid a string of mass shootings across the Bay Area and an ongoing legal battle over the future of California’s ban on assault weapons. So far in 2021, the city of Oakland has recorded six mass shootings, meaning a single incident with four or more gunshot victims. The most recent occurred Saturday, when a 22-year-old man was killed and seven more people were injured at the end of a Lake Merritt Juneteenth celebration. Just three weeks earlier, another Bay Area mass shooting made international news when a disgruntled Valley Transportation Authority employee killed nine of his colleagues and then himself at a San Jose light rail yard.
Biden met with a panel of leaders around the country Wednesday, including Richmond’s DeVone Boggan, the founder of a gun violence prevention program Advance Peace.
“He’s saving lives,” Biden said. “States and cities should invest American Rescue Plan funds in those kinds of anti-violent crime programs.”
The president has been clear that he is opposed to the “defund the police” movement, which has been effectively used against other Democrats to cast them as anti-law enforcement.
“This is not a time to turn our backs on law enforcement,” said Biden, who noted that “crime historically rises during the summer, and as we emerge from this pandemic the traditional summer spike may be even more pronounced than it usually would be.”
Biden announced a “zero tolerance” policy that would give no leeway to gun dealers who fail to comply with federal law — their licenses to sell would be revoked on a first offense.
The president has already announced a half-dozen executive actions on gun control, including going after “ghost guns,” homemade firearms that lack serial numbers for tracking and often are purchased without background checks.
Legislation to expand background checks has so far stalled in the Senate after the House passed it in March, even though Majority Leader Chuck Schumer vowed then that the Senate would hold a vote on the bill.