Vice President Kamala Harris announced Friday that President Joe Biden’s administration is launching a new office under the Department of Justice, which the White House says will “support the effective implementation of state red flag laws.”
Harris, who is tasked with leading the White House’s gun control policy efforts, announced the new gun control office while visiting Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, where a gunman killed 17 people in 2018, according to Reuters.
“We have a duty to remember and a duty to bear witness to what happened here,” the vice president said. “We must do better.”
State red flag laws allow law enforcement officials to prevent individuals believed to be a “danger to themselves or others” from using Second Amendment protections to purchase and possess firearms, according to a fact sheet provided by the White House.
On Saturday, the Biden administration’s Department of Justice issued a press release detailing how the new National Extreme Risk Protection Order (ERPO) Resource Center will provide resources, training, and technical assistance to law enforcement officers, judges, attorneys, prosecutors, and other groups and individuals responsible for overseeing the implementation of red flag laws.
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“The launch of the National Extreme Risk Protection Order Resource Center will provide our partners across the country with valuable resources to keep firearms out of the hands of individuals who pose a threat to themselves or others,” U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said. “The establishment of the Center is the latest example of the Justice Department’s work to use every tool provided by the landmark Bipartisan Safer Communities Act to protect communities from gun violence.”
The recent announcement of the Biden administration’s new gun control office has been met with backlash by some Republican lawmakers. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), released a statement Saturday on X, formerly Twitter, warning that the Justice Department’s new office will be used to “violate” the Second Amendment.
“Merrick Garland just announced a massive Red Flag Operation that the DOJ will be running by using EVERY spy tool the US government has in order to violate American’s Second Amendment!!” Greene wrote. “This comes right after Johnson fully funded Biden’s weaponized DOJ!”
