How gun safety advocates won over Biden

This past March, a group of grassroots gun safety activists and young advocates met with White House officials to, once again, press them on the creation of a federal office of gun violence prevention.

The group argued to Stefanie Feldman, then-senior adviser to the Domestic Policy Council director, and Hannah Bristol, senior adviser of Public Engagement, that it was essential to have staff solely focused on a crisis that continued to grow.

And once again, they were told that establishing such an office would be costly to the administration's progress on gun safety.

Now, six months later, the landscape has shifted…. entirely.

President Joe Biden this week formally announced the first-ever federal office focused on gun safety during a Rose Garden event. On Thursday, he tapped Vice President Kamala Harris to oversee the operation, with Feldman serving as director and two advocates as deputy directors. Greg Jackson, executive director of the Community Justice Action Fund, and Rob Wilcox, the senior director for federal government affairs at Everytown for Gun Safety, will report to Feldman.

Friday’s Rose Garden event was no doubt a celebration. But for many advocates, the office was the culmination of four years of hard-fought work waged both publicly, and behind closed doors with White House officials.

In early 2021, after back-to-back shootings in Atlanta and Boulder, Colo., a group of grassroots advocates frustrated by Biden’s response formed the Time is Now Coalition. The members — who came from a variety of gun safety groups — pushed the president to fulfill his campaign promise to do everything he could to combat gun violence. They argued this included a federal office.

Powered by survivors of gun violence, parents of victims and community members struck by tragedy, the group sent letters to the White House calling for the federal office. They delivered their own State of the Union address at the National Mall. They had tense conversations with White House officials.

“We were told time and time again by administration officials that this was a fool’s errand. That it would somehow undermine the goal that we’re all working towards… Some of the larger organizations in our movement told us time and time again to stand down — that we were somehow creating a political headache for the president,” said Igor Volsky, founder and former executive director of Guns Down America.

One of the main obstacles inside the White House was then-Domestic Policy Council adviser Susan Rice, who frequently told advocates that a federal office of gun violence prevention wasn’t in the cards and noted that multiple policy experts were already focused on gun policy. Few doubted that Rice and her staff were working hard to tackle the gun violence challenge, but they also were concerned her team juggled so many issues at once that gun safety wasn’t getting the attention they felt it needed.

Frustration began to bubble over.

“Doing what we do, pushing our champions to do their job, is sometimes a lonely place,” said Po Murray, leader of Newtown Action Alliance.

Manuel Oliver, whose son, Joaquin "Guac" Oliver, was killed in the Parkland, Fla., shooting, was booted from the White House after shouting, “We have to do more than that” during Biden’s 2022 speech following the passage of the historic Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. Prior to that, he was arrested for scaling a crane outside of the White House and dropping a banner featuring a photo of his son and that said: “45K PEOPLE DIED FROM GUN VIOLENCE ON YOUR WATCH!”

Ultimately, Rice granted Oliver a sit-down. But during their talk, Oliver said a staff member entered the room with a note for Rice, prompting her to say she had to get to another meeting.

“You just told me you were in charge of this. So how come you’re going to go to another meeting? This is exactly why we need an office,” Oliver recalled saying. Rice stayed in the room.

In May, Rice left the White House, and Biden tapped Neera Tanden, who formerly ran the progressive think tank Center for American Progress, to head the DPC.

But the directive to launch the new office ultimately came down from Biden, White House officials said. He’s helped pass historic legislation, issued two dozen executive actions on guns and continues to call for Congress to pass an assault weapons ban. But the shootings haven’t stopped, and he knew he had to do more.

White House officials said it was the right time to create the office because the environment has shifted. As Biden’s options on gun policy dwindled, they needed full-time staffing to help implement his policies, coordinate with state and local officials and to identify new creative actions for the president to take.

“This office will dig deep to find additional life saving actions that this administration can take,” Feldman said in a call Thursday, previewing the new office.

The political pressure is also key. As 2024 rapidly approaches, the president needs the support of young voters to win reelection, and advocates argue that a federal gun violence prevention office demonstrates the president’s leadership on the issue.

“They would not be doing this if young people had not pressed for this for a long time, and called for it and turned out and voted in such significant numbers in 2022,” said Parkland survivor David Hogg, a March For Our Lives founder and board member. “They know that gun violence will be the top issue in 2024 for young people.”

Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.), who introduced legislation to create a federal office, spoke about the power of young people during Friday’s event. He ran through a list of victims’ names, including Oliver’s son, Joaquin.

But Oliver wasn’t in attendance. He wasn’t invited. Still, he says he’s thrilled, and grateful, that Biden took this action. He is comfortable with his position on the other side of the White House gates.

“You need people on the outside of the White House to keep fighting,” he said.

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