President Joe Biden plans to announce the creation of a new federal office to counter gun violence on Friday afternoon, the first such office to exist at a federal level.
According to four people briefed on the announcement, the department will be staffed with a number of gun control activists, including Community Justice Action Fund Executive Director Greg Jackson and Everytown for Gun Safety Senior Director Rob Wilcox.
White House Staff Secretary Stefanie Feldman will reportedly lead the department. She currently serves as the gun policy portfolio chief for the Biden administration.
The announcement comes as multiple gun control advocacy groups have exhorted Biden to act on curbing gun violence. Everytown for Gun Safety, Community Justice Action Fund, and similar organizations have all previously pushed the administration to expand efforts to regulate guns and create a federal office dedicated to those efforts.
“We want to make sure the office is set up in a way that it has true authority and it can be sustained long term, even beyond this administration, and we know that may or may not require congressional action,” Jackson said last month.
Brady President Kris Brown wrote in a statement that her gun control organization “adamantly supports the creation of such an office,” adding that preventing gun violence “will take a whole-of-government approach, and this new office would ensure the executive branch is focused on proven solutions that will save lives.”
Democratic officials lauded the new office as necessary to save lives: Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, said “this is an idea I have been pushing relentlessly for some time, and I’m thrilled President Biden is making the Office of Gun Violence Prevention a reality.”
Biden has placed curtailing gun violence at the center of his administration and has taken several actions to heavily regulate firearms. After the mass shooting last year in Uvalde, Texas, Biden signed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which added extended background checks for adults under twenty years old, clarified federal firearms license requirements, and provided funding for state red flag laws.
Earlier this year, Biden signed an executive order directing administration officials to move the nation “as close to universal background checks as possible without additional legislation” and “increase appropriate use” of red flag orders and “safe storage of firearms.” Biden released a statement on the Fourth of July calling the nation to “once again ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines” following a lapsed ban initially enacted with his help in 1994.
