In advance of President Biden’s trip to New York City following the second NYPD funeral for a slain office in one week, the Biden Administration has released a new Comprehensive Strategy to Reduce Gun Crime, which includes a reignited DOJ focus on so-called “ghost guns.”
Called the “National Ghost Gun Enforcement Initiative,” when launched, it will “train a national cadre of prosecutors and disseminate investigation and prosecution tools to help bring cases against those who use ghost guns to commit crimes.”
According to DOJ statistics, local law enforcement reported 8,712 suspected ghost guns in 2020, up from 1,750 in 2016.
The term “ghost gun” refers gun kits that are available for gun enthusiasts to purchase and construct at home, making them difficult to track. While many have pointed out that these kits are hardly easy to snap together and require a lot of specialized, expensive equipment to assemble, it’s been a DOJ priority to eliminate them for a while now, citing fears that it makes it easier for criminals to illegally obtain a weapon.
The initiative is just one of many gun measures announced by the administration, which is anxious to shed its “soft-on-crime” image as violent crime statistics continue to break records in many Democrat-run cities in the nation.
Other actions include a directive for “every U.S. Attorney’s Office to increase resources dedicated to district-specific violent crime strategies.”
“The Justice Department will work with state and local law enforcement to address the most significant drivers of violence in each district, including to get repeat fun violence in offenders off of our streets,” the statement reads. “New York City’s Gun Violence Strategic Partnership — which the President and Attorney General will visit today with Mayor Eric Adams — is one odel of the strategies Justice will help expand nationwide.”
The administration also vows to “crack down on the ‘Iron Pipeline,'” which it defines as “the illegal flow of guns sold in the south, transported up the East Coast, and found at crime scenes in cities from Baltimore to New York City — and other firearms trafficking by adding personnel and other resources to strengthen the Justice Department’s multijurisdictional task forces that target interstate firearms trafficking.”
Biden’s budget also provides funding for “community policing, street outreach by credible messengers, hospital-based intervention, and youth programming and calls on Congress “to act on [Biden’s] $300 million budget request to more than double the size of the Department of Justice’s COPS community policing grant program.”
Biden and Garland are scheduled to travel to the Big Apple Thursday, where they will meet Mayor Eric Adams (D) and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D). They are then scheduled to meet with community leaders in Queens to discuss how to slow spike in gun violence there.
As reported by the BizPacReview, just hours before thousands of NYPD officers gathered once again to lay one of their own to rest, a rookie police officer was shot and wounded in Queens in an attempted carjacking.
He became the sixth office shot in New York since the start of this year.
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Melissa Fine is the former executive editor of Casino Player, Strictly Slots, and Poker
Digest magazines. She is a UCLA graduate, news junkie, and dedicated Stargate SG-
1 fan. Melissa currently lives with her dog and two cats in a tiny town in the Sierra
Nevada foothills.
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