Bad News and Good News for Americans– The bad news is a federal office has been established and funded to promote red flag laws, the good news is it’s headed by Kamala
It’s not surprising that a man who is arguably the worst president in the country’s history would appoint inarguably the most incompetent vice president in the country’s history to execute another harmful policy of the most anti-Second Amendment administration in the country’s history.
The Office of Gun Violence Prevention was established by the administration in September 2023 as another way to undermine the Second Amendment and attack the rights of law-abiding Americans.
The Office of Gun Violence Prevention was established under the guise of fighting the mythical scourge of the public health crisis that is gun violence. I say mythical because there is no such thing as gun violence. Gun violence is a political term like assault rifle and has no basis in reality. We don’t speak of knife violence or car violence or alcohol violence when people are killed by others using these things because there is no political advantage in doing so.
The real crisis is not gun violence (a made up, nonsense term) but our inability as a society to deal with the very real violence that a small segment of the population perpetrates on the rest because those on the left are incapable of honestly discussing the subject.
As an example, Vice President Harris showed up at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School site in Parkland, Florida where 17 people were murdered in 2018. Her purpose was to politicize the tragedy to promote the federal Extreme Risk Protection Order Resource Center (ERPO). ERPO is funded by a justice department grant and operated by the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions which is part of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The purpose is to promote and encourage states to establish and utilize Gun Violence Restraining Order (GVRO) or “red flag” laws.
The obvious argument is that red flag laws will prevent school shootings and other incidents where criminals or mentally unstable individuals attack others. The truth is that they will prevent nothing and are frequently abused causing harm to innocent, law-abiding citizens rather than preventing violence. It’s worth noting that 21 states currently have some form of GVRO laws while 29 states have constitutional carry laws.
An honest discussion might include the fact that with 340 million Americans, we will always have evil deranged people that harm innocents. We can reduce the number of incidents and minimize the number of fatalities and injuries, but the incidents will always occur.
If we were to have an honest discussion on say, school shootings, it might begin by acknowledging that guns are not the problem rather the problem is a society that is creating the monsters (at an alarmingly increasing rate) that commit these crimes. The societal causes are many and complex and we can’t even begin to address the problem without first acknowledging it’s existence.
People having an honest discussion would quickly arrive at the conclusion that the fastest, cheapest, most effective way to reduce the number of fatalities and injuries in a school shooting is to allow trained staff to be armed enabling them to protect themselves and students until help arrives. Even having law enforcement on site is no guarantee as was demonstrated in Parkland where the deputy assigned to the school hid outside while people were being murdered inside.
Providing taxpayer money to subsidize training for school staff willing to accept the responsibility would be better than funding seemingly legitimate organizations like Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions that are actually rabid anti-gun groups. ERPO represents a gross misuse of tax dollars and endangers all Americans.
These are things people having an honest discussion about violence in our society and possible solutions might consider. Unfortunately, we are in no danger of honest discussion breaking out anytime soon as our political leaders, in both parties, have little interest in resolving anything.
Things are likely to continue as they are until the American people decide they want something different. With that I would urge informed Americans to become engaged and do what you can to elect political leaders who will help create the America you want for yourself and your children.
So, while the bad news is that the federal government has created another taxpayer funded office intended to harm a certain law-abiding segment of our society (i.e., gun owners), the good news is that with Kamala Harris in charge the new office will be so poorly run that it will cause much less harm than if a competent executive were at the helm.
©2024 Joseph T Drammissi
This article and more of Joe’s work covering the Second Amendment and other topics can be found on Substack at https://getagrip.substack.com