WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is expected to sign an executive order Thursday that aims to help schools create active shooter drills that are less traumatic for students but still effective. The order also aims to curb new technologies that make it easier to fire and obtain weapons.
The president has promised that he and his administration will continue to work through the end of the term, focusing on the issues that matter most to him. Curbing gun violence was at the top of the 81-year-old president’s list.
He often says he has comforted too many victims and been to too many mass shootings. He was instrumental in passing gun safety legislation and has worked to ban assault weapons, restrict gun use and help communities after violence. He created the nation’s first Office of Gun Violence Prevention, headed by Vice President Kamala Harris.
Both Biden and Harris were scheduled to speak about the plague of gun violence at an afternoon rally in the Rose Garden.
The new order directs his administration to investigate how active shooter drills can cause trauma for students and teachers, in an effort to help schools create drills that “maximize their effectiveness and limit any collateral damage they may cause,” said Stefanie Feldman, the director of Biden’s Office of Gun Violence Prevention.
The order also establishes a task force to study the threats posed by machine gun conversion devices, which can turn a semi-automatic pistol into a fully automatic firearm, and will look at the growing prevalence of 3D-printed guns, which are printed from internet code, are easy to make and have no serial numbers, making them untraceable to law enforcement. The task force is to report back within 90 days, not long before Biden is due to leave office.
Overall, a majority of Americans want stricter gun laws, regardless of what their state’s current gun laws are. That desire could be tied to some Americans’ perceptions of what fewer guns could mean for the country — namely, fewer mass shootings.
Gun violence continues to plague the country. Four people were killed and 17 others were wounded when multiple gunmen opened fire Saturday at a popular nightspot in Birmingham, Alabama, in what police described as a targeted “hit” on one of the dead.
As of Wednesday, there have been at least 31 mass killings in the U.S. in 2024, killing at least 135 people (not including the gunmen who died), according to a database maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today in partnership with Northeastern University.
