People: White House Hears Gen Z's Plea to Address Gun Violence: 'Turned Our Calls for More Action into Reality'
President Biden and Vice President Harris were joined by Gen Z Congressman Maxwell Frost — a former March for Our Lives organizer — to the announce the first-ever Office of Gun Violence Prevention
Months after America's first Gen Z congressman introduced a bill that would create a federal office to establish a coordinated response to the gun violence crisis, President Joe Biden announced his administration was doing exactly that, establishing the first-ever White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention.
Florida Rep. Maxwell Frost — the lawmaker who first introduced the bill with Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy — was on hand last week for the formal announcement of the new office, which will be overseen by Vice President Kamala Harris.
“After years of organizing as a young person impacted by gun violence in America, like so many, and introducing my first bill ever to create an Office of Gun Violence Prevention, it was an honor to stand alongside President Biden and Vice President Harris as the Biden Administration turned our calls for action into reality," Frost, 26, said in a statement. "For the first time ever, we will have a federal Office of Gun Violence Prevention. This move will save lives."
Prior to his 2022 election, Frost worked as the national organizer at March for Our Lives, a youth-led organization founded in the aftermath of the Parkland school shooting that aims to put an end to gun violence. A survivor of gun violence himself, Frost first engaged in the issue much earlier, when he found himself shaken by news of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, which took place when he was 15 years old.
In his own statement, Biden, 80, said the establishment of the new federal office came in the absence of "sorely-needed action" from Congress, which has yet to establish widely supported legislation that would enact universal background checks and ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.
“I’ll continue to urge Congress to take commonsense actions that the majority of Americans support," Biden said in a press release, adding: "But in the absence of that sorely-needed action, the Office of Gun Violence Prevention along with the rest of my Administration will continue to do everything it can to combat the epidemic of gun violence that is tearing our families, our communities, and our country apart."
Also in attendance at the official announcement event were families of gun violence victims, including Rhonda Hart, the mother of a 14-year-old girlwho died in a 2018 mass shooting at Santa Fe High School in Texas, which killed 10 people.
“I feel it’s something we’ve been waiting on a long time," Hart tells PEOPLE. "Progress on anything gun violence related takes so much time. I’m glad we got this big win today.”
In June 2022, the president signed into law the "Bipartisan Safer Communities Act," which enacts commonsense gun laws and provides funding for mental health support and anti-violence programs.
But Biden has also acknowledged that those moves aren't enough, pleading with legislators to enact legislation that would ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, require safe storage of guns, end gun manufacturers’ immunity from liability, and enact universal background checks.
Source: People