While gun control zealots applauded the move, defenders of the Second Amendment pointed to the ridiculousness of adding another federal layer that will only target lawful weapons owners.
As for the National Rifle Association (NRA), the nation’s largest and oldest gun rights group lambasted the administration action. According to the organization, even the name is wrong.
NRA spokesman Billy McLaughlin told Fox News Digital that the new entity should instead be called the “Federal Office to Disarm Law-Abiding Americans and Defeat the NRA.” He then pointed specifically at the social media posts of one of its leaders.
Longtime Biden aide Stefanie Feldman is set to lead the charge along with Vice President Kamala Harris (D). McLaughlin noted over 20 postings from Feldman that boasted how she will go after the NRA and conduct “big, bold” actions to curtail gun rights.
President Joe Biden (D) endorsed the office. “Every time I’ve met with families impacted by gun violence as they mourn their loved ones, and I’ve met with so many throughout the country, they all have the same message for their elected officials: ‘do something.’”
He added that the opening of the new office proclaims a “clear message” that the federal government will “centralize, accelerate and intensify” its work.
Feldman’s posts on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, show a clear and angry stance against the right to keep and bear arms along with the organizations that support it. In 2020, she posted, “Defeat the NRA. The stakes are high.”
Referring to the high-profile anti-gun rights group, Feldman that same year posted, “Brady is officially on Team Joe!” She then said the combination will vanquish gun manufacturers and the NRA.
The Biden aide said her boss “will be the gun safety president. He’s beaten the NRA before” and isn’t afraid to confront those who support the Second Amendment.
Feldman referenced previous political battles over background checks, so-called “assault weapons” and large capacity magazines. She said her mentor defeated gun rights supporters and will do it again. She even predicted that Biden would repeal the “nonsensical liability protection for gun manufacturers.
That, of course, has not happened.
Vice President Harris also referenced previous battles between her boss and the NRA, saying “he can do it again.”
She specifically referenced the 1994 federal ban on “assault weapons” that lasted for 10 years before it expired and was not renewed. By the federal government’s own admission through multiple studies, the ban had virtually no effect on violent acts.
The president touted Harris as the “leading voice” in his latest effort to curtail gun rights for law-abiding Americans.
Another activist tapped to lead the Office of Gun Violence Prevention is former Community Justice Action Fund executive director Greg Jackson. Like Feldman and Harris, his views on firearms and especially policing are well known.
Despite the White House’s clear effort to distance itself from “defund the police” rhetoric, Jackson regularly espouses the exact opposite. He once participated in a webinar titled “Reimagining Policing” in which he supported “community-led violence intervention and prevention strategies” to replace law enforcement.
In 2020 he lamented that he was personally “struggling” while “police budgets thrive.”
The leadership and narrative of the new gun control office makes their aims quite clear. Far from the noble cause of addressing violent crime, they simply want to target groups who support the right to keep and bear arms and whittle those rights down to nothing.
The NRA is right. This office is grotesquely misnamed.
