There will also be an effort to hold the gun industry accountable by naming and shaming federally licensed firearms dealers who are violating the law. “We haven’t had enough support on the ground, these are gonna require other agencies to get in the game.” “For too long we were letting local communities and survivors pick up the pieces and navigate through this,” Jackson said. “Our trauma matters no matter how many media cameras are there and how many news stories run on what happens,” said Greg Jackson, executive director of Community Justice Action Fund, a national non-profit that supports and advocates for local violence prevention programs.įollowing the mass shooting at Tops grocery store in Buffalo, New York, in May 2022, the organization called on the White House to create support for victims and survivors of mass violence. ![]() But this new federal provision is explicitly designed to help victims of mass shootings, so that the response is not left solely to community organizers and residents. Many states have victim compensation programs to reimburse victims of violent crimes such as assault, robbery and homicide, and the Department of Justice offers some money for states to distribute after mass violence through the anti-terrorism and emergency assistance program. The US has already exceeded 100 mass shootings this year. Garland will also devise a plan to stop gun dealers whose licenses have been revoked or surrendered from continuing to trade.īiden is also directing his administration to create protocols to support people who survive and are directly affected by mass shootings, including both high-profile incidents and those that have not been covered as widely in the press. The administration argues that this will mean fewer guns sold without background checks and therefore fewer guns ending up in the hands of criminals and domestic abusers. Photograph: Jim Ruymen/UPI/Rex/Shutterstock “Number one, to make it clear that those who are wilfully violating the law need to come into compliance with the law and, number two, to make it clear to people who may not realise that, under that statutory definition they are indeed in the business of selling firearms, they must become federally licensed firearm dealers and they must run background checks before gun sales.”Ī woman bows before portraits of Monterey Park shooting victims killed in January 2023. He will ask Garland to clarify the statutory definition of who is “engaged in the business” of dealing in firearms, the official said. On a conference call with reporters, a senior administration official said last year’s bipartisan gun safety legislation – the most sweeping of its kind in three decades – “created an opening” for Biden to direct the attorney general to move the US as close to universal background checks as possible without additional legislation. On a swing through California, the president acknowledged this political reality and unveiled an executive order to enforce existing laws against gun sellers who, knowingly or otherwise, currently fail to run the background checks they should. But with Republicans in control of the House of Representatives, there is little hope of Congress heeding Biden’s pleas to pass legislation. Opinion polls show that a majority of both Democrats and Republicans support universal background checks that would reveal whether a person is a convicted criminal or domestic abuser before allowing them to buy a gun. ![]() “Survivors will always carry the physical and emotional scars.” A holiday of hope and possibility marked by horror and pain … a sense of safety shattered,” Biden told the crowd. “We all saw a day of festivity and light turn into a day of fear and darkness. Biden began his speech with a somber acknowledgment of the victims at Star dance studio, as well as Brandon Tsay, an employee at another ballroom dance hall who disarmed the attacker before he could begin shooting at a second location.
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