President Joe Biden announced the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention with great fanfare. He was also surprisingly transparent about what the office was there for, namely pushing gun control to various states. Sure, it might offer some non-gun control thoughts on reducing violent crime, but the goal was always going to be to push their agenda.
And now the future of that office is in limbo. Should it be shut down or retooled?
Well, either could be interesting. Retooling the office to focus on non-legislative solutions or even legislation that doesn't infringe on the right to keep and bear arms as a way to reduce violent crime as a whole could be a good thing. If you're going to keep it, that's what needs to happen.
But my colleague over at Bearing Arms, Cam Edwards, reported earlier this week that the NSSF has a better idea:
The National Shooting Sports Foundation says Trump shouldn't bother to replace anti-gunners like Everytown alumn Rob Wilcox and Tides Foundation Community Justice Action Fund veteran Greg Jackson, and instead should defund and disband the office entirely.
“President-elect Trump has the ability to stand strong with law-abiding Second Amendment supporters and wipe away this unprecedented abuse of government authority that has been used as a blunt instrument against rights that are protected by the U.S. Constitution,” said Lawrence G. Keane, NSSF Senior Vice President & General Counsel. “Nowhere else, within the U.S. Government, are taxpayers forced to fund efforts to denigrate their rights protected by the law. This office was established to appease the special-interest gun control lobby and donors. The Biden-Harris administration has used this office to attempt to justify their unconstitutional and whole-of-government attacks on Second Amendment rights and the industry that makes those rights possible to exercise. This office must no longer exist after January 20, 2025.”
Keane suggests that Trump could replace the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention with "one dedicated to the advancement and preservation of the Second Amendment". I brought up that very thing when Keane joined me on Bearing Arms Cam & Co the day after the 2024 elections, and I'm still fully on board with that proposal.
In truth, the money that's currently being funneled toward infringing on our rights could instead be used to help fund public gun ranges and grants for training programs for low-income gun owners.
But even if that direction isn't considered, scrapping the office is probably the right move regardless of what other actions are taken. We don't need our tax dollars being squandered in an effort to take away our rights, thus screwing us in two ways instead of the usual case of just being screwed once.
Shutting down the office first and foremost should be on Trump's Day One agenda, and if a bunch of gun control advocates suddenly lose their government benefits and have to start working in the private sector once again, I'll try not to shed a single tear for them.
I'd say it would be hard to do, but the sarcasm won't come through in text form sufficiently.