President Joe Biden will announce the creation of the first-ever federal office of gun violence prevention on Friday, fulfilling a key demand of gun safety activists as legislation remains stalled in Congress, according to two people with direct knowledge of the White House’s plans.

Stefanie Feldman, a longtime Biden aide who previously worked on the Domestic Policy Council, will play a leading role, the people said.

Greg Jackson, executive director of the Community Justice Action Fund, and Rob Wilcox, the senior director for federal government affairs at Everytown for Gun Safety, are expected to hold key roles in the office alongside Feldman, who has worked on gun policy for more than a decade and still oversees the policy portfolio at the White House. The creation of the office was first reported by The Washington Post.

  • Lightborne@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    If Americans would stop fetishizing guns to the point of sacrificing children to the altar of their bang-bang toys, we could actually have a respectable society.

    • shalafi@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      CDC counts gun and vehicular deaths at about the same, year in and out. Thing is, I can avoid suicide (43% or so), bad people and places. I cannot avoid random people killing me on a stroll or a drive.

      Where’s your passion for dealing with death on the road? Because guns don’t scare me a bit. Driving does.

    • bobman@unilem.org
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      1 year ago

      Nah. I’ve thought about this.

      If they couldn’t use guns, they’d use cars. If they can’t use cars, they’d focus on torture. i.e. instead of trying to kill as many people as possible, just try to make whoever you catch suffer as much as possible before pulling the plug.

      These are all band-aids to avoid addressing the real problem: those who feel they have nothing to live for so they take their anger out on society.

      The solution to the problem is reducing the disparity in wealth. It won’t eliminate all of them, but it will severely reduce them. This is why nobody is talking about it. The ruling class has been successful, again, in getting us to squabble over bullshit to avoid addressing the real issue, which is always the money.

      • Lightborne@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I’ve thought about this.

        This ought to be good.

        If they couldn’t use guns, they’d use cars

        LOL

      • SeaJ@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        If they couldn’t use guns, they’d use cars. If they can’t use cars, they’d focus on torture. i.e. instead of trying to kill as many people as possible, just try to make whoever you catch suffer as much as possible before pulling the plug.

        Cars are quite a bit slower and a hell of a lot more obvious than a gun. They might switch to that (they have not in other countries) but that would still certainly result in fewer deaths overall. Not sure why they would possibly switch to torture. That one does not seem to have any basis in reality.

        You are correct that wealth disparity is one of the big parts of the puzzle. The other big party of the puzzle is how easy it is to get a gun due to how many there are floating around. Things like straw purchases being rampant means that it is pretty easy to obtain an illegal gun. Gun registration would help a bit with that as well as something like requiring a current gun permit to purchase new guns.

        • bobman@unilem.org
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          1 year ago

          They might switch to that (they have not in other countries)

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Toronto_van_attack

          Not sure why they would possibly switch to torture.

          Because if they can’t kill a lot of people but still want to cause as much harm as possible, torturing is the next best option. That’s how terrorism works. If you’re innocent to the world you live in, this might not make sense.

          • SeaJ@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            Let me know when any other country has as many car attacks per capita as there are shootings per capita in the US. I’ll wait. Cherry picking one incident means jack shit.

            Most shootings are not to inflict the most damage. There is no more torture in countries with stricter gun laws than there is here in the US. If you have some evidence that there is, feel free to share it but until then all you have is ridiculous scare mongering horse shit.

      • shalafi@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        School shooting started because of exactly one reason: Columbine. If those monsters had got their pipe bomb working, that would be the weapon of choice.

        There were plenty of weapons in circulation before Columbine, and school shooting were not a thing. I’m 52, I remember.

        • bobman@unilem.org
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          1 year ago

          Bombs are not people’s weapons of choice because they require some knowledge to build and pose a substantial risk to the amateur builder.