The White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention was controversial from the moment it was announced. In and of itself, the idea of the White House taking an interest in violent crime isn’t an issue. The White House looking for ways to reduce violent crime isn’t, either.
The problem was that this particular office was predicated on spreading gun control, using federal tax dollars to do so.
Now, a Florida news story about an anti-gun activist and lawmaker traveling to Washington to meet with officials from that office kind of made me smile. First, the report:
Democratic state Rep. Christine Hunschofsky will be in Washington, D.C., Thursday for a meeting between White House officials and state lawmakers on federal- and state-level efforts to reduce gun violence.
The trip is part of an ongoing effort by Legislators for Safer Communities, which Hunschofsky co-chairs, to champion gun safety and violence prevention.
Christyna Thompson, State and Regional Press Secretary for gun safety group Giffords, said it will be a closed-door discussion with leaders from the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention.
At issue, she said, will be “how progress at the federal level to curb the impacts of gun violence would be continued at the state level.”
Thompson added that the meeting is tentatively the first of “multiple conversations” on how states can continue gun safety efforts “as transfers of power take place in state legislatures and beyond.”
President Joe Biden established the first-ever White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention in September 2023 to implement and expand on key executive and legislative action toward that goal.
Vice President Kamala Harris oversees the Office, which longtime Biden gun safety policy adviser Stefanie Feldman leads as Director alongside gun violence prevention advocates Greg Jackson and Rob Wilcox, who serve as Deputy Directors.
So what’s there to smile about here?
That it’s the last such meeting we’re likely to ever hear about.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m morally repulsed by the idea of closed-door meetings between federally-funded White House employees and activists hellbent on curtailing our constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms. So much for transparent government, I suppose.
But on the same token, it’s not like there’s a lot of time for them to actually do anything. Biden could issue an executive order or 12 in the final days of his presidency, but all of those will be subject to whatever Donald Trump wants to do when he retakes office in January. What’s more, everyone in that office knows both that and that they need to be looking for new jobs come January 20th.
In short, she can go and have her meeting, but that’s not going to be happening again going forward.
Moreover, it’s unlikely that any future Democratic president is going to create a special office to push gun control knowing good and well it’ll just vaporize with the next GOP administration, so this really will be the last visit for this.
And it should be.
What we had was a federal jobs program for anti-gun activists. That’s not what our tax dollars should be going for, especially considering the fact that gun control simply doesn’t work.
Read the full article here
