Biden Unveils New Strategy to Combat Gun Violence

The Biden administration is trying to get ahead of what is shaping up to be a summer of crime, throwing federal relief dollars at community programs and law enforcement while cracking down on weapons trafficking and rogue gun dealers.

WASHINGTON (CN) — Responding to a nationwide surge in armed robberies, homicides and assaults, President Joe Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland announced a new comprehensive strategy to combat violent crime on Wednesday with a focus on gun violence.

Last year, homicides rose 30% and gun assaults rose 8% in large cities. In the first quarter of this year, gun homicides were 24% higher than in the first quarter of 2020, which were 49% higher than the first quarter of 2019.

Public safety experts fear that this summer will be even more deadly, as temperatures heat up and Covid-19 restrictions ramp down.

Garland assured the public Wednesday that the government is taking the uptick seriously.

“The Justice Department’s Violent Crime Reduction Strategy and our initiatives to stem the rising tide of illegal guns will save lives," he said. “But these steps alone will not steps alone will not solve violent crime: success depends on all of us joining together.

“Every one of our U.S. attorney’s offices is working with its local partners to establish an immediate plan to address the spike in violent crime which typically occurs during the summer,” Garland added.

Right before the announcement, Biden and Garland met with mayors, police chiefs, state attorney generals and violence-intervention experts on how the federal government can help them make their communities safer.

Biden said they discussed how background checks, ban on assault weapons and community policing are tried and true methods of reducing crime.

“But over time, these were gutted or woefully underfunded,” Biden said. “In our conversation today we talked about our strategy to supercharge what works while we continue to push the Congress to act on sensible gun violence legislation.”

Unable to pass sweeping gun control legislation in Congress, the president has now shifted strategies to a series of executive actions.

The strategy has five parts: stem the flow of firearms used to commit violence, provide law enforcement more tools and resources, invest in community violence intervention programs, expand summer programs and employment opportunities and help formerly incarcerated individuals successfully reenter their communities.

“Violent crime cannot be solved by law enforcement alone,” Paul DelPonte, executive director of the National Crime Prevention Council, said in a statement. “Connecting crime prevention professionals and communities is an essential part of crime prevention infrastructure.”

The efforts will be funded by the American Rescue Plan, with the government considering the surge in violence pandemic-related. On Wednesday, the Treasury Department issued new guidance as to how state and local governments can use the $350 billion designated for them to address violent crime.

“The president’s strategy on combating gun crime is meant to allow cities and other local jurisdictions to tailor their approaches to public safety and gun violence and gun crime reduction to their own particular circumstances,” a senior administration official said in a press call with reporters on Tuesday.

“So a city like Atlanta, experiencing a surge in gun violence as a result of a pandemic, could choose to use a portion of their American Rescue Plan dollars to hire more officers or to pay them overtime when those funds would be used to advance community policing,” the official said.

The administration’s plans include a zero-tolerance policy for rogue gun dealers to stop the illegal trafficking of firearms, a new policy that allows the Justice Department to revoke federal licenses of gun dealers the first time they violate federal law, and the creation of five new federal strike forces to monitor and intercept firearm smuggling.

“If you willfully sell a gun to someone who’s prohibited from possessing it, if you willfully fail to run a background, if you willfully falsify a record, if you willfully fail to cooperate with the tracing requests on inspections, my message to you is this: we’ll find you,” Biden said. “And we will seek your license to sell guns. We’ll make sure you can’t sell death and mayhem on our streets.”

In April, Biden already announced that the Justice Department would work to stem the flow of ghost guns, and in June, announced they would better regulate firearms with arm braces and invest more funding in community violence intervention.