Biden Administration takes actions to address gun violence

President Joseph R. Biden Jr. recently announced six initial actions to reduce gun violence in the U.S. following the mass shootings that occurred this past month in the cities of Atlanta, Indianapolis and Boulder.

The Biden Administration’s actions include investing in evidence-based community violence interventions, issuing an annual firearm report on firearms trafficking and nominating a director for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which has not had a confirmed director since 2015, according to the White House’s website.

Other actions include halting the growing number of ghost guns, or firearms that can be easily made from kits, according to the website. Additionally, they will seek to create model "red flag" legislation, which allows people to seek court orders that temporarily restrict firearms from those who are deemed a danger to themselves or others, as well as making the distinction of when a stabilizing brace turns a pistol into a short-barreled rifle more transparent.

Several Rutgers community members weighed in on these measures and the issue of gun violence. Stephanie Bonne, director of the New Jersey Hospital Violence Intervention Program and assistant professor of surgery at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, said that she was most encouraged by the funding being allocated to hospital-based violence intervention.

“It’s one thing to take care of people who’ve become hospitalized (due to) their firearm injury, but we also need to think about how we can prevent that firearm injury from happening to begin with,” she said. “That happens, I think, in the setting of investment in research and investment in communities.”

Thurman Barnes, assistant director of the New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center and associate professor in the Department of Urban-Global Public Health at the Rutgers School of Public Health, said that funding toward community violence intervention is a good first step in addressing the issue of gun violence.

“When you think about reducing gun violence in communities, you’re going to need people on the ground in the community, who have the respect of the people in the community,” he said. “They have a proven strategy to reducing violence in urban communities.”

People living in cities have been exposed to homicides on a larger scale, with a disproportionate impact on Black and Brown Americans, according to the website. The Biden Administration said it is emphasizing community violence interventions to address this disparity.

Barnes said that many systemic issues that contribute to gun violence, such as wealth, education, healthcare and crime rates, must be addressed.

“In our cities … the dropout rate is pretty high. Those are issues that contribute to what people do with their lives," he said. "Somebody who doesn’t finish high school who has very limited choices … (and) is living in a place that has a concentration of poverty, (or where) crime is prevalent, is probably more likely to be involved in that kind of lifestyle themselves."

Jai Patel, a School of Arts and Sciences junior and a member of the Students Demand Action National Advisory Board, discussed the initial actions’ emphasis on ghost guns, which he stated is one of the largest problems at the moment.

“Ghost guns allow anyone, anywhere to easily obtain a firearm without a serial number," he said. "You can get these without passing any background checks … and they are one of the fastest-growing threats to public safety in the country."

Patel said that long-lasting gun reform is less about the Biden Administration and more about cooperation from the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate.

“In the last cycle, the House passed H.R.8, which was the life-saving universal background checks bill, but it never made it to the Senate floor for a vote … Now, we have a gun-sense majority in the Senate,” he said. “So, even though it is a slim majority, it's time … to vote on life-saving background checks.”

Barnes said the next steps toward gun reform include the federal government incentivizing states to create stricter gun laws themselves.

“New Jersey has some of the most stringent gun laws in the country," he said. "We are really a fertile ground for illicit guns — crime guns or illegally obtained guns — to make their way into New Jersey. The federal government might be able to incentivize other states that don't have stringent gun laws to change their laws."