The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the firearms industry trade association, has called upon incoming President Donald Trump to “disband” the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention.
This office was created in 2023 by President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris as a way of getting a gun control mini-bureaucracy inside the White House. According to an NSSF news release, the office “never addressed criminal misuse of firearms.”
“Instead,” NSSF said, “it squandered taxpayer dollars and employed former gun control lobbyists to minimize the American rights to keep and bear arms and propose policies to harass and damage the American firearm and ammunition industry.
“President-elect Trump might consider replacing this office with one dedicated to the advancement and preservation of the Second Amendment,” the organization suggested.
Biden will leave the White House on Jan. 20, 2025, having been unable to fulfill one of his main goals, which was to permanently ban so-called “assault weapons.” It was one of his agenda priorities when he ran for office in 2020, and he has been a career gun banner.
In a prepared statement, NSSF Senior Vice President and General Counsel Larry Keane explained, “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. 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’s observations reflect the prevailing attitude about the Biden-Harris gun control office within the Second Amendment community. The people Biden and Harris picked to staff the office have been gun control advocates all along.
The NSSF news release noted, “Stefanie Feldman as Director, she once boasted on X that President Biden would defeat firearm manufacturers that he once labelled ‘the enemy’ by overturning the Protection of Lawful Commerce In Arms Act (PLCAA). She posted, ‘As president, he’ll defeat them again. And, he’ll repeal the non-sensical liability protection for gun manufacturers.’
“Greg Jackson,” NSSF continued, “serves as Special Assistant to the President and Deputy Director, who was previously a gun control advocate for the far-left George Soros-backed Tides Foundation Community Justice Action Fund.
“The White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention is also staffed by Rob Wilcox, a former lobbyist for antigun billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety. Everytown supports bans on entire classes of firearms and bankrupting the firearm and ammunition industry through frivolous lawsuits,” NSSF said.
NSSF’s Keane isn’t the only critic of the Biden-Harris gun control office. Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, has disliked the idea from the start, and said so in September 2023, calling it “an obnoxious scheme.”
“I was appalled then,” Gottlieb told TGM, “and my opinion hasn’t changed. This operation never passed the smell test, and the people involved are devoted anti-gunners, so it was clear all along what the real purpose of this office was.”
Gottlieb indicated he would not be unhappy to see the Gun Violence Prevention office disappear, perhaps even before Trump takes office.
