Vice President Kamala Harris will visit Parkland, Fla., home of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School where, in 2018, a deranged former student brought a semi-auto rifle onto the campus and opened fire, killing 17 students and staff, and her visit has all the earmarks of a campaign stop.
As noted by NPR earlier this year, Harris is “taking a more front-and-center role on addressing gun violence.” NPR says gun control is a “key issue for young voters” this year.
According to CBS News, Harris will visit the school March 23. She will meet with the families of the shooting victims. The report said Harris, a veteran anti-gunner since her days as a state legislator and then state attorney general in California. The report also noted Harris “oversees the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention.”
Last September, when President Joe Biden announced the new executive level gun control office, a White House news release noted the president “tasked the office with four key responsibilities, including enhancing the federal government’s partnerships with cities and states to help them advance their own efforts to reduce gun violence.” He handed oversight to Harris.
This new office is involved in creating “model” legislation which includes the following:
- Safe Storage Model Legislation. Safe storage saves lives. It is one tool in the toolkit to reduce school shootings, because we know that most often those students who carry out K-12 school shootings are using firearms they obtain from the home of a friend or family member. It is also a critical strategy to reduce suicide by firearms, accidental shootings, and the theft of firearms. The Department of Justice’s model legislation details how states can require the safe storage of firearms, including in vehicles, and hold individuals liable for harm caused by unsecured firearms.
- Lost and Stolen Firearms Reporting Model Legislation. Reporting of lost and stolen firearms allows law enforcement to investigate and prosecute firearms trafficking. The Department of Justice’s model legislation provides states with a framework for requiring that a person promptly report the loss or theft to law enforcement.
It was intended to happen after the White House last December hosted nearly 100 Democrat state lawmakers—no Republicans were invited—at an event led by Harris. This event was, according to PBS, “run by the Office of Gun Violence Prevention.”
At the time, PBS said, Harris told attending legislators it was “our responsibility, our chosen responsibility, dare I say our duty, to do the work of laying the path to get where we need to go. … And there are best practices to be fair, including not only what people write in terms of proposing legislation, but how you think about work and how you will think about messaging, how you will think about empowering and uplifting.”
Among the legislators invited were lawmakers from Maine, where memory of the Lewiston mass shooting was still fresh in everyone’s mind,” plus delegations from several other Democrat-controlled states.
