Absolutely no one expected the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention to keep going along the same route it had been under the Biden administration when Trump took over. For one thing, Trump isn’t supportive of gun control efforts. Why would he have an office in his White House that pushed for gun control?
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We always knew that if the office remained, it wouldn’t be the same entity no matter what.
Well, I say “we always knew” and “no one expected,” but that’s not entirely accurate. It seems at least one person did, and it’s the same person who tried to claim “zombie guns” were a thing without understanding what part of a firearm makes the gun.
That’s right, Rep. Maxwell Frost of Florida claims he really thought Trump would keep the office.
Anyone attempting to visit the site for the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention began seeing a “404 page not found” message shortly after President Trump was sworn in to his second term.
U.S. Rep. Maxwell Frost confirmed that the office, which he helped spur the Biden Administration to create in 2023, had been quietly shut down.
“The office is gone,” Frost told the Orlando Sentinel.
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But Frost said he didn’t expect Trump to officially announce the office’s demise.
“Trump knows it’s bad politics for him to come out and say, ‘I’ve eliminated this office,’ because, the fact of the matter is, gun violence has gone down over the last four years,” he said.
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Now, it does seem that “gun violence” has gone down over the last four years, but it still hasn’t dropped to where it was pre-pandemic.
Despite the near-total push for gun control under the Biden administration, it’s still not back to where it was under most of Trump’s presidency. That’s something to think about.
It’s especially important to note that even if gun control were absolutely effective–spoiler, it’s not–the Office of Gun Violence Prevention had absolutely no ability to institute gun control unilaterally. Executive Orders still needed to go through the president.
And why would a vocally pro-gun president keep an office that exists primarily to push gun control, anyway? If Frost really thinks that was a possibility, then the people of his district have elected an only semi-functional moron to Congress and have done so a couple of times now.
Now, I’m a fan of approaching the issue holistically, as Frost puts it, and I recognize that there are systemic issues at play here. If that’s what the office had focused on and been directed to focus on, it’s possible the office might still be there.
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But it wasn’t.
It was sold to us as a way to coordinate anti-gun efforts across the states, meaning our tax dollars were being spent to do the job of anti-gun groups who could then redirect their funds toward other things. That’s wrong.
And that’s really what Frost is upset about. He’d hoped that Biden’s jobs program for gun control activists would be allowed to stand and tax dollars could continue being used for his pet cause.
There was no way Trump was going to let that go. He spent his first term undermined by people who he should have been able to count on. He wasn’t about to leave an entire office dedicated to just that in place.
Only an idiot would think otherwise.
