An Urgent Federal Response

The federal government has long proven its ability and powers when there is political will.

We have never mobilized the full might of the federal government in the fight against gun violence. Quite the opposite: for decades, the gun lobby has weakened the enforcement authority of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) and prevented even basic scientific research by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Beginning with the next Administration, we demand increased federal funding for a multi-agency approach to tackling gun violence, including increased funding for ATF, DOJ, CDC, HHS, NIH, HUD, and DOE initiatives. On Day One in office, the next President should take two concurrent executive actions: (1) declare a national emergency around the epidemic of gun violence – both to unlock executive resources and publicly underscore the urgency of the moment – and (2) announce an audacious goal of reducing firearm deaths and injuries by 50% over the next ten years, thereby saving up to 200,000 lives.

To operationalize these goals, the President must work with Congress to pass legislation around gun licensing and enhanced gun ownership standards, bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, policies to disarm gun owners who are a risk to themselves and others, and gun buy-backs. More immediately, the President must create a new White House position: the National Director of Gun Violence Prevention. The National Director of GVP will manage multi-agency coordination in the service of a singular mission. Short of creating a new federal agency dedicated to confronting gun violence – an enormous challenge in an age of partisan gridlock – we believe this position represents our best, immediate shot at effective federal leadership. The National Director of GVP will carry the highest civilian-level title in the White House – Assistant to the President – and bypass traditional White House reporting structures like the Chief of Staff; instead they will report directly to the President. The Director will have an experienced team of federal officials tasked with actualizing the goal of saving 200,000 lives by reducing firearms deaths and injuries by at least 50% over the next ten years. They will focus on:

Empowering weakened federal agencies – the National Director of GVP will ensure that the whole of the federal bureaucracy will be much stronger than its individual parts. With a direct line to the White House and a singular mandate to reduce gun deaths and injuries by 50%, the Director will provide agency heads at the ATF or CDC with a powerful advocate inside the White House. The Director will also work with the Department of Justice, the Treasury Department, and the IRS to coordinate the establishment of the federal licensing process, which could yield billions of dollars of additional federal revenue to address gun violence. The National Director of GVP’s Day One priority: allocate – as a down payment – $250 million of annual funding to the CDC/HHS/DOJ to research how to best understand and address gun violence. Studies have found that gun violence is the most seriously under-researched cause of death, even while other causes with similar or lower rates of mortality, including hypertension, anemia, and malnutrition, have as much as $1 billion in funding.

– the National Director of GVP will ensure that the whole of the federal bureaucracy will be much stronger than its individual parts. With a direct line to the White House and a singular mandate to reduce gun deaths and injuries by 50%, the Director will provide agency heads at the ATF or CDC with a powerful advocate inside the White House. The Director will also work with the Department of Justice, the Treasury Department, and the IRS to coordinate the establishment of the federal licensing process, which could yield billions of dollars of additional federal revenue to address gun violence. The National Director of GVP’s Day One priority: allocate – as a down payment – $250 million of annual funding to the CDC/HHS/DOJ to research how to best understand and address gun violence. Studies have found that gun violence is the most seriously under-researched cause of death, even while other causes with similar or lower rates of mortality, including hypertension, anemia, and malnutrition, have as much as $1 billion in funding. Educating Americans about the risks surrounding guns – we have been taught by the gun lobby and industry that guns are safe products. Quite the opposite is true: the presence of a firearm in your home dramatically increases your chance of death. Working with the CDC and interested advertising partners, the National Director of GVP must launch a public safety campaign around the dangers of firearms.

– we have been taught by the gun lobby and industry that guns are safe products. Quite the opposite is true: the presence of a firearm in your home dramatically increases your chance of death. Working with the CDC and interested advertising partners, the National Director of GVP must launch a public safety campaign around the dangers of firearms. Distributing resources to address the intersectional dimensions of gun violence – working with Congressional appropriators and the private sector, as well as the resources afforded by the new federal licensing revenues, the National Director of GVP will coordinate the distribution of grants to state and local officials to address the many types of gun violence. Gun violence in America differs dramatically by geography and demographics. African American men are 10 times more likely to die by gun homicide than white men, but white men are 2.5 times more likely to die by gun suicide than African American men. In short, what works in one community to reduce gun violence may not work in another. Some of the most promising solutions to address these distinct manifestations of gun violence include: Community-based violence reduction – urban gun violence, which accounts for a majority of the 14,000 gun homicides each year, is completely addressable. Ample evidence indicates that urban gun violence is highly concentrated within a specific subset of young, at-risk men of color. If we acknowledge this basic premise and build a community-legitimate and trauma-informed initiative to provide direct individual outreach, social services, job creation, and crisis management programs to interrupt and intervene with at-risk individuals, we can seriously reduce violence in our cities. In fact, one researcher’s estimate is that $899 million of funding over eight years – a very small fraction of the federal budget – directed at the 40 cities in America with the highest rates of violence, would produce an outsize return: 12,000 lives saved and $120 billion saved in direct and indirect gun violence costs. The National Director of GVP will ensure that we aggressively invest in reducing urban gun violence. Police violence – we cannot talk about gun violence in communities without talking about our national challenges with police violence. Officer-involved shootings are now a leading cause of death for young American men. While police violence both contributes to, and is influenced by, weak gun laws, we also need structural reforms that directly produce better policing. The Director must work with local police departments and the DOJ to fund and implement programs to better train officers in implicit bias, conflict resolution, and crisis intervention. We must also promote stricter policies on the use of force, strengthen civilian interaction training, expand de-escalation training, and improve data collection on officer-involved shootings. We also call on the Director to implement the findings of President Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, including re-instituting the practice of DOJ civil rights investigations of local police departments and DOJ enforcement of local consent decrees. Finally, we believe that gun violence prevention goes in tandem with criminal justice reforms, including pretrial and sentencing reform and support for restorative justice programs and re-entry jobs programs that reflect an approach to healing our communities after the violence occurs. The more successful we are with stronger gun policies, the fewer firearms enter the illegal market, and the lower the footprint of the criminal justice system in people’s lives. Suicide prevention – suicides represent the majority of gun deaths in America, accounting for nearly two-thirds of gun deaths, with half of all suicides committed with a firearm. Gun suicide rates are rising particularly for older white men and younger people of color, fueling a crisis of suicide that has surged 30% in the last two decades. Research supports a straightforward correlation: more guns means more lethal suicide attempts. To address these challenges, we believe the solutions are twofold. First, we must pass and implement federal policies that create more barriers (permanent revocation, temporary holds, and waiting periods) to firearm access for at-risk individuals who are a danger to themselves. Second, we must invest in state and local suicide prevention programs, including gun seller partnerships, behavioral health service programs, lethal means training for health care providers and other gatekeepers, hotlines, and crisis intervention training for law enforcement. These programs must form another crucial pillar of the National Director of GVP’s coordination and investment priorities to ensure that we make suicide prevention programs more accessible than firearms. Intimate partner violence – firearms make intimate partner violence all the more dangerous; American women are five times more likely to be killed in a domestic violence incident when there is a gun in the home and many recent mass shooters have been linked to domestic violence. That’s why we recommend gun licensing denials for any type of domestic violence offender. On top of that, we would leverage the resources of our federal licensing system to fully fund domestic violence programs, including the National Domestic Violence Hotline and other programmatic components of the Violence Against Women Act. Mental and behavioral health programs – we believe that there is a false choice in our country today: stronger gun laws or more behavioral health funding. First, it is crucial to acknowledge: mental illness is not a risk factor for interpersonal gun violence; in fact, individuals struggling with mental illness are more likely to be victims of gun violence than offenders. The next Administration needs to reject rhetoric that stigmatizes people with mental illness and invest aggressively in gun violence prevention and mental and behavioral health programs. Our next Administration must make holistic investments in mental and behavioral health services and programs for all communities that are struggling with the aftermath of all gun violence: the daily toll of homicides, suicides, and mass shootings. Our goal: make it as easy to access mental and behavioral health services in these communities as it was to access firearms.

– working with Congressional appropriators and the private sector, as well as the resources afforded by the new federal licensing revenues, the National Director of GVP will coordinate the distribution of grants to state and local officials to address the many types of gun violence. Gun violence in America differs dramatically by geography and demographics. African American men are 10 times more likely to die by gun homicide than white men, but white men are 2.5 times more likely to die by gun suicide than African American men. In short, what works in one community to reduce gun violence may not work in another. Some of the most promising solutions to address these distinct manifestations of gun violence include:

The final component of an urgent federal response is about us: our nation’s youth. We started March For Our Lives because we believe our generation must do our part to ensure a simple future: we are the last generation that has to grow up with gun violence. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy worked with Congress to establish the Peace Corps, which has become an iconic program demonstrating what is best about America. The next President and National Director of GVP should establish a Peace Corps for Violence Prevention, known as the Safety Corps. Over the next 10 years, this new domestic program would put 10,000 young people per year to work on paid, one-year engagements in communities and nonprofits around the country. The Safety Corps would unlock the power of young people to bolster the civic infrastructure of anti-poverty and criminal justice reform nonprofit programs that address the root causes of gun violence. Our aim is twofold: (1) give young Americans valuable work experience and lived proximity to the complex, comprehensive ways of preventing gun violence and (2) give nonprofits additional capacity to accelerate their crucial missions. Anyone 16 – 25 years of age would be eligible and the program would pay a living wage, therefore accommodating young people no matter their level of wealth; the program can function as a gap year to college or community college or as an on-ramp into a permanent career in the nonprofit sector.

To support the above efforts, we must implement automatic voter registration at the moment that young Americans turn 18 years old. Automatic voter registration is already state law in 16 states and the District of Columbia; it increases voter registration rates, cleans up voter rolls, and saves states money. We need a federal fix instead of a patchwork of state laws to modernize our voter registration process. Additionally, we need federal policies to allow for pre-registration of young people when they turn 16, which is an existing practice in many states. The more we participate in our civic process, the more effective we will be at reducing the impact of gun violence on the next generation.