Critiquing the White House 9/26/2024 Fact Sheet on Guns

Summary = "meh"

Today, President Biden and Vice President Harris are announcing a new Executive Order…

Etc. Nobody spends a tenth of the amount of time actually reading these things as they do arguing and complaining about them, so I figured I’d save you the time and read it for you.

After the prior Administration oversaw the largest one-year increase in murders ever recorded, President Biden and Vice President Harris took action from the start of their Administration to reduce violent crime.

This is meaningless chest bumping. The prior administration had three years of very low crime and then got miraculously stuck with a year of lockdowns, looting, rioting, and defunding of police - behavior which varied widely depending on the local reaction to the lockdowns and Georgie Floyd.

Under the leadership of President Biden and Vice President Harris, in 2023 the United States experienced the single largest homicide rate drop in recent history. The reduction in homicide has accelerated this year. Data submitted to the Department of Justice shows that the homicide rate dropped another 17 percent from January through June 2024, compared to the same time period in 2023.

This drop is real, and it’s because everybody stopped behaving like it was 2020.

Data from the Gun Violence Archive indicates that the number of mass shootings so far this year is 20 percent lower than it was at this time last year.

“Mass shootings” as defined by them are basically just a violent crime marker that goes up and down with ordinary crime, completely unrelated to highly public spree shootings. More on that here.

President Biden is signing an Executive Order to accelerate progress on two key priorities: combating emerging firearms threats and improving school-based active shooter drills.

The meat of the new Executive Order is broken up into two parts, and neither of them are particularly significant nor will likely affect your life in meaningful ways. Nor will they do anything about actual crime, which is falling on its own. The first has to do with 3D printers and auto-sears, the second has to do with new ways to psychologically terrorize children. 

Combatting Emerging Firearms Threats: In April 2021, one of the Biden-Harris Administration’s first executive actions to reduce gun violence was to address the emerging threat of firearms without serial numbers, often referred to as “ghost guns.” To expand these efforts, ATF established an Emerging Threats Center. This Center focuses ATF’s resources on identifying developments in illicit firearm marketplaces, including the use of new technologies to make and unlawfully distribute undetectable firearms and devices that convert semi-automatic firearms into illegal machineguns.

In 2021 they moved some people to a new desk where they Google about Glock Switches all day and occasionally write reports about what they saw on 4Chan.

Now, President Biden and Vice President Harris are taking additional action on two emerging firearms threats: machinegun conversion devices and unserialized, 3D-printed firearms.

Machinegun conversion devices enable semi-automatic firearms, including easily concealable handguns, to match or exceed the rate of fire of many military machineguns with a single engagement of the trigger—up to 20 bullets in one second. From 2017 through 2021, ATF recovered 5,454 of these devices, a 570 percent increase over the previous five-year period. Machinegun conversion devices are illegal to possess under federal law, but we continue to see these devices show up at crime scenes because they are small, cheap, and easy to install. Machinegun conversion devices are often illegally imported or illegally made on a 3D printer from computer code found online. The 3D-printing of a machinegun conversion device costs as little as 40 cents and takes fewer than 30 minutes.

“20 bullets per second” is about how fast a Glock equipped with an after-market auto-sear fires, so at least they got their math right this time. These are illegal to own or manufacture. We continue to see them used in crime because curiously, criminals don’t follow laws. The White House is not lying about these things becoming more popular with criminals. Of those 5000 switches seized by the ATF, around 500 were seized in the last year by Texas ATF alone. The rest of their depiction of how easy it is to 3D print an auto-sear for a Glock or other weapon is relatively accurate. You could probably do that tomorrow if you wanted, but you shouldn’t, because it’s already illegal. 

Unserialized, 3D-printed firearms can be used for illegal purposes such as gun trafficking, unlawful possession by people convicted of felonies or subject to domestic violence restraining orders, or unlawfully engaging in the business of manufacturing or selling firearms. These firearms can be 3D-printed from computer code downloaded from the Internet and produced without serial numbers that law enforcement use to trace firearms recovered in criminal investigations. Some 3D-printed firearms can be made to be undetectable by magnetometers used to secure airports, courthouses, and event spaces, even though these undetectable firearms are illegal to make, sell, or possess under federal law. As 3D-printing technology continues to develop rapidly, the safety threat posed by 3D-printed firearms may suddenly increase.

This is mostly garbage. The only fully 3D printable guns are basically one shot zip guns and even they would get detected by scanners because they require metal ammunition. There are multiple ways to build the part of the gun that holds the serial number, and mail order the parts that don’t, and stick the gun together at the end. And as long as the gun you build is itself legal, you can build it for personal use entirely legally with no serial number. They’re only illegal to sell.

In this Executive Order, President Biden is establishing an Emerging Firearms Threats Task Force, consisting of leadership from key federal departments and agencies. President Biden is directing the Task Force to issue a report within 90 days that includes: an assessment of the threat posed by machinegun conversion devices and unserialized, 3D-printed firearms; an assessment of federal agencies’ operational and legal capacities to detect, intercept, and seize machinegun conversion devices and unserialized, 3D-printed firearms; and an interagency plan for combatting these emerging threats. The report will include any additional authorities or funding the federal agencies need from Congress in order to complete this work.

The Administration is going to tell some bureaucrats to write a report asking for more money for their bureaucracies, using the fear of 3D printed guns and Glock switches as a justification for the additional money. 

That’s literally all this is.

Improving School-Based Active Shooter Drills: The Biden-Harris Administration is committed to preventing gun violence in schools, including by keeping guns out of the hands of potential school shooters and investing more resources in school safety and violence prevention. The majority of schools are currently using drills to prepare for an active shooter situation. Despite the ubiquity of these drills, there is very limited research on how to design and deploy these drills to maximize their effectiveness and limit any collateral harms they might cause. Many parents, students, and educators have expressed concerns about the trauma caused by some approaches to these drills. Federal agencies need to help schools improve drills so they can more effectively prepare for an active shooter situation while also preventing or minimizing any trauma.

Sending your child to school for one year is safer than stepping on a single commercial airline flight once. The actual solution to parents, educators, and children being traumatized by spree shooter drills is to quit doing the stupid spree shooter drills. If we actually wanted to dissuade school spree shootings we’d just call them terrorism and carve of 1% of the Global War on Terror budget and secure the schools, getting rid of the drills entirely. Unsurprisingly, this is not what the administration recommends, because terrorizing children is a feature not a bug to them.

In the Executive Order, President Biden is directing the Secretary of Education and the Secretary of Homeland Security, in coordination with the Attorney General, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, and the U.S. Surgeon General, to develop and publish, within 110 days, information for K-12 schools and institutions of higher education regarding school-based active shooter drills. The information will include a summary of: existing research on active shooter drills and resources for school districts and institutions of higher education on how to create, implement, and evaluate evidence-informed active shooter drills; how to conduct effective and age- and developmentally-appropriate drills; how best to communicate with students, families, and educators about these drills; how to prevent students and educators from experiencing trauma or psychological distress associated with these drills; and how best to serve people with disabilities and those with language-related needs, including by ensuring compliance with federal civil rights laws, when designing and implementing school-based active shooter drills.

Instead, they want to come up with ways to make the school shooter drills work better, without enough data points to even know what did or didn’t work so far. (pro tip: what actually matters is armed response time) This will of course lead to more funding for more bureaucrats to do more reports on more policy measures which won’t do anything.

In addition to the Executive Order, federal departments and agencies are taking the following actions:

Promoting Safe Gun Storage and Red Flag Laws

Encouraging Safe Storage of Firearms: Today, the Department of Education is providing schools, school boards, and policymakers with a new tool to promote safe gun storage in their communities. Following up on its initial safe storage actions, the Department of Education is publishing an interactive website that highlights examples of state, community, and school district actions across the nation that promote safe gun storage within school communities. The website includes a map with state safe storage laws, examples of how schools are communicating with parents about safe storage, and examples of local policies on safe storage education. This new resource builds on guidance the Department published earlier this year to highlight physical safety measures schools can pursue to help keep students safe in the event of gun violence in schools.

Voluntary safe storage is something that the gun community should adopt and encourage, as discussed here by Open Source Defense. It’s likely that whatever website the administration cooks up will probably berate communities which don’t have government mandated safe storage laws that encourage cops to kick down the doors of black people and charge them with random crimes, but it’s not likely to have much other effect. Whether safe storage becomes more prevalent within the gun community will depend entirely on the actions of the gun community itself. 

Clarifying Medicaid Reimbursement for Counseling on Firearm Safety: Health systems, hospitals, and healthcare workers are an essential component of a healthy gun violence prevention and intervention system. By the end of October, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) will announce that states may choose to use Medicaid to pay a health care provider for counseling parents and caregivers on firearm safety and injury prevention. This announcement will build off the coverage that Medicaid provides for “anticipatory guidance,” which is health education and counseling to help parents and caregivers understand and improve the health and development of their children. For example, Bright Futures/American Academy of Pediatrics’ guidelines include firearm safety guidance, such as safe storage guidance, as recommended anticipatory guidance for pediatricians to provide to parents.

Herein, they print money and pay social workers to talk to people about storing guns properly. This is technically less intrusive than passing laws, but probably not as effective as me going on a podcast and also encouraging the same behavior.

Implementing State Red Flag Laws: The Department of Justice is announcing over $135 million in formula awards to 48 states under the Byrne State Crisis Intervention Program (Byrne SCIP), which provides funding for the implementation of extreme risk protection order, or “red flag”, programs, state crisis intervention court proceedings, and related programs/initiatives. The implementation of state red flag laws is supported by the National Extreme Risk Protection Resource Center.

Herein they print money and give it to states to fund red flag law initiatives. Whether red flag laws work or not is a hotly debated topic. Sometimes they seem to work fine, and sometimes the cops call in their own red flags to circumvent the warrant process on people they want to beat with sticks. The ultimate result of this initiative remains to be seen, and will probably vary state by state.

Funding Community Violence Intervention

Funding Community Violence Interventions: In furtherance of the Biden-Harris Administration’s strategy to invest in community violence interventions as a proven solution to prevent gun violence, the Department of Justice is announcing an additional $85 million in funding through the Community Violence Intervention and Prevention Initiative (CVIPI). This funding will help 30 agencies and organizations develop and expand their community violence intervention work, including hospital-based violence intervention, street outreach, and cognitive behavioral therapy. These strategies are essential complements to law enforcement and this investment is part of the $400 million in total funding that the Biden-Harris Administration has secured for CVIPI. CVIPI is only one part of how the Administration funds community violence interventions. This fact sheet lists the full range of federal resources available to address community violence.

These sorts of initiatives actually worked in Oakland California and a lot of other places. And if they can work in Oakland, I daresay they can work anywhere. The question remains how much of the federal cheese actually makes it into the hands of the locals to use on the initiative and how much greases the mortgage payments of the beltway on its way down the pike. HWFO rates this measure as “probably good and worth doing.”

Clarifying Medicaid Reimbursement for Violence Intervention: CMS previously clarified that states may authorize health care providers to be reimbursed by Medicaid for violence intervention programs. In October, CMS expects to proactively raise this clarification with states. CMS will also explore how best to convene state governments and healthcare providers on incorporating Medicaid benefits into violence prevention programs.

I admit I do not understand at all how a Medicaid provider is supposed to run a violence intervention program.

Improving the Gun Background Check System

Facilitating Enhanced Background Checks for Individuals Under Age 21: The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA) established enhanced background checks for individuals under age 21 trying to purchase a firearm. These enhanced checks have already stopped over 900 transactions, keeping guns out of the hands of dangerous individuals. 

Point of order: Just because they stopped 900 transactions doesn’t mean they prevented dangerous individuals from receiving guns. It might just mean they flagged every 20 year old hit by the system. The burden of proof for this claim has not been met.

But a number of states across the country have privacy laws that prevent state officials from fully responding to enhanced background check inquiries. The Biden-Harris Administration’s Safer States Agenda made fixing this issue a top priority for states, and Connecticut, Vermont, Nevada, Texas, and Kentucky have all recently made necessary changes. Today, the Department of Justice is issuing model legislation that additional states may use to inform their own legislation and allow a carve-out to share juvenile records solely for the purpose of enhanced background checks. In addition, the Justice Department is releasing information on whether state laws permit information-sharing with regard to juvenile records for the purposes of enhanced background checks.

This looks like a guidance document to adjust what sort of information gets farmed for NICS. Hard to say whether it’s a big deal or not.

Maximizing the Enhanced Background Check with Red Flag Laws: Part of the enhanced background check requires requesting records from state and local law enforcement and mental health repositories about potential purchasers under 21.  In these and other circumstances, if a person shows clear signs of being in crisis and a danger to themselves or others, they may qualify for consideration under applicable red flag laws which would generally result in that person being ineligible to possess or receive firearms.  By October 22, the Extreme Risk Protection Order (ERPO) National Resource Center will provide training to state and local law enforcement on the ERPO process, including how it intersects with individuals under 21.

Ditto.

Improving the Federal Gun Background Check System: BSCA’s enhanced background checks for gun purchasers under age 21 and the law’s narrowing of the “boyfriend loophole,” along with the expanding number of states with red flag laws, are placing new challenges on state and local agencies attempting to ascertain what records they need to send to the federal gun background check system. To address these challenges, there needs to be system-wide improvements and a new era of collaboration among various entities engaging with the federal gun background check system. By December 15, the Department of Justice’s Office of Justice Programs will have evaluated the existing grant programs that support improvements to the gun background check system and make any changes needed to support states looking to improve their records systems, which may include lengthening the duration of grants where appropriate. 

The “boyfriend loophole” is a new bit of jargon cooked up by the anti gun crowd, which goes like this. Currently, if you’re convicted of domestic violence against your spouse, kids, mom, or similar, you get added to the NICS list and can’t buy a gun. Prior to 2022, if you were convicted of domestic violence against your boyfriend or girlfriend while not living together, they didn’t add you to NICS. The “Bipartisan Safer Communities Act” of 2022 added domestic violence convicts to NICS even if they lived in different houses. Apparently they’re having a hard time keeping the NICS database up to date with the requirements in this new law. 

Whether this initiative will fix the problem is questionable. It might. But since my readers don’t beat up their romantic partners, please continue to not beat up your romantic partner and you should be unaffected by this bit. And if you do beat up your romantic partner, I hope it’s part of a consensual BDSM scene and not abuse. Otherwise, unsubscribe, I don’t need your traffic. 

Expanding Data on Gun Violence and Gun Trafficking

Publishing Additional Data on Ghost Gun Trends and Firearms Trafficking: This winter, ATF will publish the fourth volume of its National Firearms Commerce and Trafficking Assessment. This volume will provide an update on ghost gun trends and trafficking investigations, as well as expanded information on machinegun conversion device recoveries.

“The bureaucrats we talked about above will issue a report.”

Expanding Collection of Gun Violence Data: There is a lack of reliable and timely data on gun deaths and gunshot injuries that show what is happening nationwide and in individual communities. This data is critical to focusing investment and enforcement efforts. Today, the FBI is announcing that it will collect additional detail in its data collection for gunshot injury wounds in the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) by June 2025. The FBI will implement a new injury code to reflect a gunshot wound in the NIBRS victim segment. NIBRS will also enable law enforcement agencies to submit additional detail as to how firearms were used in specific crimes, and the nature of the crime at issue.

Undaunted by how the changes they made to NIBRS in 2020 screwed up data collection for a couple of years, they will issue a demand that local cops have to collect and file even more data.

Improving Data on Gunshot Injuries: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is improving a data visualization tool to present gun death and injury data faster and at a more local level. Using data from vital statistics and emergency rooms at the local level can help inform prevention strategies and evaluate the effectiveness of programs.

This should be fun to watch, actually. The CDC is not and never has been prohibited from doing research on guns, but they are prohibited from spending federal money on advocacy. This is obviously a way to sneak a ZOMG GUNS website into the CDC’s budget, but whether it counts as advocacy or not is going to be up to the UI.

Supporting Survivors of Gun Violence

Addressing the Trauma Resulting from Gun Violence: This fall, the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) will take additional action to support individuals dealing with the trauma that results from gun violence. SAMHSA will release:

Best practices for local offices of violence prevention to use in addressing trauma resulting from gun violence;A tip sheet for individuals affected by gun violence who may be seeking more information on the behavioral health impacts of gun violence and how to seek help;A report on lessons learned from the federal ReCAST grant program to uplift the voices of communities impacted by violence as well as share strategies other communities can implement to promote healing, recovery, and resiliency; and

A toolkit for faith-based leaders, educators, and other leaders to help communities affected by the trauma resulting from gun violence.

Bureaucrats who like to make PowerPoint presentations make more PowerPoint presentations. The curious thing about this bullet is they decided to make a PowerPoint presentation for preachers, when ordinarily the modern blues have moved to marginalize and sideline faith organizations. I don’t think this matters too much, but “ok we’ll make a PowerPoint presentation for preachers too” is an interesting look under the hood.

Destroying Crime Guns

Ensuring Appropriate Disposition of Firearms Seized by Law Enforcement: Firearms or firearm parts that were presumed to be destroyed by law enforcement have begun showing up in crimes. Sometimes the guns recovered by law enforcement are sent to a third-party that only partially destroys them. By October 30, the Department of Justice will refresh and clarify best practices for federal law enforcement disposition of seized firearms, including when working in partnership with state and local law enforcement. The Department of Justice will also release a plan to offer new training and education for state and local partners on safe and appropriate firearm disposition.

There’s a pretty amazing documentary series called Trafficked with Mariana van Zeller, in which each episode documents every supply chain link in a different black market, from producer to consumer. She does steroids, phone scammers, cocaine, and a lot of different subjects. The first season finale followed the trafficking of guns to the Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico from the United States. She and her camera crew even get swept up in a conflict while filming. I can’t be sure but I believe it was the Battle of Culiacán. 

I say all this because the guns being trafficked to the Sinaloa Cartel originated with LAPD seizures. Some dirty cops had sold them off to the black market to be exported south of the border. This is a real thing that does happen in places like Los Angeles. The Administration’s plan to “better educate police on how to destroy firearms,” however, will not prevent the dirty LAPD cop from being dirty. One thing that could prevent that, would be if the cops simply auctioned the gun off to responsible citizens, because then there would be a legitimate and public paper trail. They won’t do that, though, so we’ll probably see no change in how many guns seized by police are reintroduced to the black market.

Preventing Firearm Suicide

Facilitating Voluntary Out-of-Home Storage to Prevent Firearm Suicide: Voluntary out-of-home storage of firearms is an effective tactic to saves lives by creating time and space between a person in crisis and a firearm. A number of states, including Colorado, Louisiana, Maryland, North Carolina, and Wisconsin, have developed gun storage maps to show different locations where a gun owner can voluntarily store their firearms. A federally funded program has developed model guidelines, contracts, and standard operating procedures for businesses interested in providing this option. Today, the Department of Veterans Affairs and SAMHSA are using their network of teams committed to preventing Veteran suicide—known as the Governor’s Challenge to Prevent Suicide Among Service Members, Veterans, and Families—to encourage states to convene federally licensed gun dealers around offering out-of-home storage to our Nation’s heroes and their families.

This is a great idea and a good thing for the government to do. Around two thirds of “gun deaths” are suicides, and suicide rate is linked to gun ownership rate among men, as highlighted by HWFO in 2018. Safe storage of guns outside the home is inhibited by 7 day waiting period laws such as in California, where you’re literally not allowed to call a buddy up and ask him to hold onto your guns for you if you’re feeling suicidal. A federal program such as this might be able to plug some of the gaps in places like California where suicidal men are prohibited from entrusting their firearms to friends. 

Congress must act. While the Biden-Harris Administration’s gun violence prevention actions are saving lives, there is much more to do. President Biden and Vice President Harris continue to call on Congress to enact commonsense gun safety legislation—from a ban on assault weapons and bump stocks to universal background checks to a repeal of gun manufacturers’ immunity from liability—and to enact federal safe storage and red flag laws and fully fund community violence intervention programs and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).

Their closer blames congress for not passing laws that would turn the entire country into Waco. 

Summary

Most of this Executive Order is simply bureaucratic “make-work” programs that will suck up money, bloat agencies, and allow anti-gun activists to circle jerk each other to no real effect. But thankfully, most of the EO won’t really do much damage to people’s lives either. There are two bits of it that seem valuable and worth doing, namely the “community violence intervention program” piece and the “voluntary out of home storage” piece, each of which are things HWFO has asked for before. 

On net, this EO is mostly trash but the two good things in it might outweigh the trash, purely because the trash isn’t significantly damaging.