The White House making noises about an ‘Office of Gun Violence Prevention’ is perhaps the funniest thing I have read all week. The Biden White house making a special seat to take on ‘gun violence’ which is a vague term, instead of gun crime like his son is accused of, is a wonderful way to do nothing productive about a vague problem but get the credit anyway.
“But Keith, at least they’re trying…”
No! They aren’t trying, they are pandering. They are spending time jangling keys for irate public to clap about. There are three Federal seats at the head of Federal Agencies already in direct charge of ‘gun violence’ prevention and response. The heads of the ATF, FBI, and the Attorney General. This team of wonder bureaucrats, in actual positions of defined authority, that are already delineated and connected to law enforcement nationally, are apparently not enough. We need a fourth nebulous wonder bureaucrat who doesn’t work for a Federal Bureau at all who needs to… to what precisely? To harumph at appropriate moments when the other three say things like, “Gun violence is a problem we need to keep trying to solve.”
No shit, Sherlock. Violent crimes of the organized type. Violent crimes of passion. Violent crimes of the transactional variety and so forth are a problem.
The NCVS for 2022 was released at it was pretty bad. Not awful, still better than the 90’s by orders of magnitude, but bad. However in that survey that concluded about 1.24% of Americans over the age of 12 was victimized by a violent crime only 10% involved a firearm. Only 42% were reported to the police. What does that stat say? Does the 0.124% of Americans who experienced a violent gun involved crime (and completely ignoring the percentage who were involved in one themselves prior to being a victim) really rate their own seat of ill defined authority to vaguely do something more than some things have been done in the past? Again, do what? Specifics.
“Tackling this epidemic will take a whole-of-government approach, and this new office would ensure the executive branch is focused and coordinated on proven solutions that will save lives.”
…okay. Biden and ‘Focused’ don’t exactly gel well in our minds these days.
Gun control, like gun violence, and even just plain old violence, disproportionately affects the lower income and minority communities. Fun fact, households who make under $25k a year are about three times as likely to be victimized as those in the $50K+ range. Is this office going to look at addressing things like skills and employment opportunities that make violence less profitable? Or are they just going to be a pocket “expert” for the White House they can point at that says things like “Assault Weapon Ban!” on command. Even as 77% of guns associated with crimes remain handguns. But let’s once again not talk about those pesky things.
Greg Jackson, the executive director of the Community Justice Action Fund, and Everytown for Gun Safety’s Rob Wilcox are expected to hold roles in the newly created office. And none of this feels like just giving your buddies jobs, right? Biden is claiming this office will save “thousands of lives” and repeating the spurious claim that gun violence is the number one killer of ‘children’ in the United States.
That’s an utterly false claim by the way, the number one mortality cause is still accidents in all three child age categories. But if we count young males in the 15-19 age range as ‘children’, despite being easily and often able to be charged as adults criminally, we can certainly pad that stat to look scarier and not like the start of the well documented two decade span of peak violence in males. A much smaller but still age relevant portion for females is there also.
But rest easy, dear readers. Finally we will have a gun violence czar to czar czarily with the three people whose job it actually is to investigate and prosecute crimes involving firearms and otherwise.
Go, Joe!
