Earlier this week, it was announced that President Joe Biden would be putting forward more executive orders on guns. Considering his history on guns and executive orders, absolutely nothing seemed off the table.
But it was really just an announcement about an announcement. It was light on details.
Well, now we know what’s up, and on the surface, it looks like no big deal. It’s when you consider the implications that things get concerning.
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris announced new executive actions on Thursday to address gun violence, an election-year move that builds the president’s legacy on the issue and provides Harris with a fresh opportunity to highlight her leadership as vice president.
During a White House event Thursday, Biden is expected to sign an executive order designed to address the trauma inflicted on children by active shooter drills in schools as well as tackle the threat of machine gun conversion devices, which are small devices that can be made with a 3D printer and turn a handgun into a fully automatic weapon. The actions are timed to this week’s one-year anniversary of Biden’s creation of the first-ever office of gun violence prevention — which he launched, in part, to identify additional ways to tackle gun violence from the executive branch without Congress.
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Federal departments and agencies will also announce a range of additional executive actions, including some related to the implementation of the bipartisan gun legislation Congress passed in June 2022 after the Uvalde, Texas, school shooting. Other actions will focus on the safe storage of firearms, implementation of red-flag laws, funding for community violence intervention programs, and improvements to the background-check system, among other moves.
The president’s executive order will establish a task force assigned to deliver a report in 90 days to assess the threat posed by unserialized, 3D printed firearms and machine gun conversion devices. These devices are already illegal under federal law, but law enforcement have reported increasingly finding these devices on crime scenes — and police believe the shooters in the recent Birmingham, Alabama, shooting used conversion devices.
On school shooting drills, the president’s move directs the surgeon general and the secretaries of the Education and Health and Human Services departments to develop and publish guidance for schools on how to effectively conduct these drills, while also minimizing unnecessary trauma.
First, let’s talk about this idea of trauma and active shooter drills. I have no doubt that there’s at least some trauma involved, but I’m just going to point out how this isn’t the result of the potential danger or the drills themselves. After all, fire drills don’t cause trauma among students despite dozens of students having been killed in various school fires in history. Tornado drills like we used to have when I was a kid didn’t really faze us other than having to sit on a cold floor and not talk or do anything except sit there.
Active shooter drills are traumatizing because politicians like the president and vice president, along with the media, make it so many of these students are convinced it’s just a matter of time before they face an active shooter. The drill then creates trauma because the things coupled together make it more like preparing for the inevitable than simply getting ready for the outside possibility.
I have concerns about what these federal agencies are doing, including things like “safe storage”–which has been the preferred euphemism for mandatory storage for a while now–and red flag laws, as well as “improvements to the background-check system.” However, absent specifics, I can’t really delve into and see if we have reason to be concerned. I’m sure we’ll get specifics in the coming days.
Now, that brings us to the task force looking at things like “machine gun conversion devices” and the fact that the report will be delivered in 90 days, which is after the election.
Full-auto switches are already illegal. You can’t have them lawfully in pretty much any circumstances. I don’t know what good studying the issue will be under the circumstances…unless the goal is to blame Glock for not changing a proven design because of the actions of criminals. If so, this may be an attempt to ban all the company’s products under the claim that they’re readily converted into machine guns, thus machine guns.
If that happens, then I’d like to know what the White House plans to do about all those machine guns on the hips of so many of our nation’s law enforcement officers.
Honestly, if that happens, there are a lot of potential problems. The best-case scenario is that the report is handed to a lame-duck administration that has no hope of continuing via the new president in any way. At that point, they can sign whatever orders they want, but Trump can override them immediately upon returning to office.
But that’s all speculation. The reality could be nothing or it could be much worse.
