News
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
view the rest of the comments
Isn’t that basically admitting that this new department can’t do anything and just posturing?
Or am I missing something?
Edit: In retrospect, the biggest value this department might have is having it be under Republican leadership down the line. An entire department explicitly against gun violence may cause some in-fighting about reasonable measures… as opposed to the current status quo.
That is of course assuming the entire department doesn’t just get tossed and establishes itself as having some teeth.
You're not missing anything. This is a politically stupid move.
It could be seen as throwing her under the bus. There isn't anything she can do, and the Republicans will seize on any ineffective measures she tries to enact.
I don't know what the end game here is except to be trying something vs the current nothing, but this is a no win proposition.
It really is kinda majestically dumb, and it will certainly have zero real impact, simply because of the Tribunal of Six. All it will do is make Harris even more unelectable as a successor candidate for president.
Good. She's a guaranteed loss.
I agree. I honestly detested her as the VP pick. She was very, very far down my list when she was still a primary candidate. Biden picked her because she’s a lady, and she’s not white. Her track record as CA AG is… not good. That’s the primary reason I strongly dislike her.
You're missing that her track record as CA AG was good if you're a Reagan era neoliberal that thinks potheads deserve 10-20.
What's that? That's who still controls the DNC?
You’re right, and I hate that.
Should have put Hunter in charge, then have him refuse to answer republican questions on his gun charges claiming executive privilege.
I mean, they COULD process stuff like threats, reports, people on watchlists who own guns, etc. to try and prevent the violence.
Not that they likely will but I mean, there is at least something they COULD do.
I mean, those are good ideas… but isn’t that already arguably covered by the FBI?
Yeah but that doesn’t mean they do it very well. Been plenty of mass shooting from people on a watchlist who legally purchased guns so like, definitely possible to make a department to try and help with that
ATF
It's classic political posturing which is unlikely to result in any real changes. But with the 2024 election coming up, Biden is looking to shore up support from Black and Latino voters. Support among those demographics has been softening and they were instrumental in his win in 2020. While gun violence isn't just a Black or Latino issue, it has historically polled as more important among those groups; so, some sort of token support for it, along with raising Kamala Harris's profile, could be seen as having a net positive effect.
As for any sort of real impact, I'd be surprised if it did anything more than put out reports and news. The single most effective change would be to either move handguns under Title II of the National Firearms Act (which was part of it's original plan) or ban civilian ownership outright. However, the decisions in DC v. Heller and MacDonald V. City of Chicago basically mean that the latter option is off the table. The former option may be more viable, though that could also put the entirety of the National Firearms Act squarely in the cross-hairs of the Supreme Court, which may be a very bad plan right now. Also, any such change to Title II would likely require Congressional action, and the probability of that is probably somewhere between "No" and "Hell No".
Ultimately, I'd expect the new office to be long on grandstanding and short on action. But, if it ends up driving more minority turnout for the 2024 election, it will have accomplished it's unstated goal. After that, it'll lurch along until it gets defunded and/or killed outright the next time a Republican is elected President. And ya, while many of the folks here may hate that idea, it's likely that will happen again and probably sooner than we all think. Regan won in a landslide less than a decade after Nixon left office in disgrace. And Biden's win in 2020 was on razor thin margins. The US is pretty close to evenly divided politically, it only takes a small shift for either party to win.
No, this is the classic ‘put the VP on an impossible task so you can say you are doing something now and can take the fall later for failing’