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The White House on Wednesday announced a new plan to assist states in curbing gun violence, turning the attention to the local level with the hope of further federal gun-control legislation fading.
In addition to two new executive actions on gun storage and reporting lost or stolen firearms, the Biden administration is offering tools to help states ban assault weapons, strengthen background checks and implement local programs to prevent and respond to gun violence.
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“We are fighting just for what is reasonable and, of course, what is right,” Vice President Harris said Wednesday at an event unveiling the initiative before 100 state legislators from 39 states, including several with Republican-controlled legislatures.
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Some of the policies the White House is advocating that states embrace have gained little or no traction on Capitol Hill. For instance, the plan urges states to enact laws to allow victims of gun violence to sue gun manufacturers and gun dealers.
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“These are all policies where the White House, in this administration, has made progress at the federal level,” Stefanie Feldman, director of the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, said during a call with reporters this week. “And we are going to continue to call on Congress to act, but in the meantime we are going to be working hand in hand with states to advance all these agenda items.”
There have been 39 mass killings with guns in 2023
The Safer States Agenda also calls on state lawmakers to create an office of gun violence prevention — much as the Biden administration did earlier this year — fund community violence intervention programs and provide more resources for those affected by gun violence.
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Supporters said they welcomed the move by the White House and saw opportunities for legislative progress. The state legislative director for the gun-control advocacy group Giffords, Sean Holihan, said it signals the Biden administration believes “it is much more likely to pass lifesaving legislation in state capitols than it is to pass anything in Congress.”
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Holihan, who attended the White House event, also said the push for state legislation could yield results at the state level, regardless of which party is in control there.
“It’s not just Democrats who care about it, but Republicans care about not having the wrong people have access to firearms,” he said.
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Rep. Lucy McBath (D-Ga.) spoke to the state legislators before the vice president took the stage, and the lawmaker said in a statement to The Washington Post that it felt like a “full circle” moment. She noted her history of lobbying local legislators to pass these kinds of laws after her son was killed in a 2012 shooting. McBath, who has served in the House since 2019, applauded the administration’s efforts on this issue and said in the statement, “We’re certainly not finished.”
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The White House plan is “further proof that they’re using every tool at their disposal to save lives,” said Monisha Henley, senior vice president at Everytown, a group that also advocates stricter gun laws. The effort to give local legislators “the tools and federal support to pass stronger gun safety laws will keep deadly weapons off our streets.”
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At least one gun rights group said it would fight such legislation wherever it is introduced.
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“This announcement underscores our success in resisting federal gun control,” Aidan Johnston, the director of federal affairs for Gun Owners of America, said in a statement to The Washington Post.
The “shift to state-level actions,” Johnston said, “indicates a reluctance to push new anti-gun measures through Congress.” He added the group is “prepared to oppose any and all state-level infringements,” he said.
Biden last year signed bipartisan gun-control legislation, the most significant law of its kind in three decades, though he conceded it did not accomplish everything he and advocates had sought. That legislation provided money for mental health services and school security, expanded criminal background checks for some gun purchases, prohibited a larger number of domestic-violence offenders from purchasing firearms, and funded programs that allow authorities to seize weapons from troubled individuals.
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Sens. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and John Cornyn (R-Tex.) negotiated that law in the wake of the 2022 mass killings in Buffalo and Uvalde, Tex.
But more recent mass killings — including one at a Christian school in Nashville in March — did not lead to additional legislation in the divided Congress. After that shooting, Cornyn told reporters, “I would say we’ve gone about as far as we can go.”
There have been 39 mass killings with a gun in 2023, according to data compiled by the Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University. That is the highest number recorded in the database, which has figures going back to 2006. The previous record, set last year, was 36.
The Washington Post defines a shooting in which at least four people are killed, excluding the shooter, as a “mass killing with a gun.”
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