The White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention is an office of the White House tasked with carrying out the president's executive orders on gun violence prevention. The office was first announced by President Joe Biden on September 21, 2023, with Vice President Kamala Harris being announced as the supervisor of the office, long time Biden staffer Stefanie Feldman as director, and gun violence survivors Greg Jackson and Rob Wilcox as deputy directors. [1] [2]
On December 13, 2023, Harris announced the Office's "Safer States Initiative." The initiative encouraged state-level policy changes to create state-level gun violence prevention offices and programs. It also announced two new executive actions from the Justice Department providing model safe storage legislation and a model for reporting lost or stolen firearms for state legislators. [3]
On September 26,2024, President Biden and Vice President Harris announced historic executive actions to address youth violence, school safety, emerging firearm threats and other relevant actions to address the crisis of gun violence.[ citation needed ]
Kamala Devi Harris is an American politician and attorney who has been the 49th and current vice president of the United States since 2021 under President Joe Biden. She is the first female U.S. vice president, making her the highest-ranking female official in U.S. history. She is also the first African American and the first Asian American vice president. A member of the Democratic Party, she was the party's nominee in the 2024 presidential election, becoming the second woman nominated for president by a major U.S. political party. From 2017 to 2021, she represented California in the U.S. Senate, and was Attorney General of California from 2011 to 2017. From 2004 to 2011, she served as District Attorney of San Francisco.
Catherine Mary Russell is an American attorney and political adviser who is the executive director of UNICEF as of 2022. Russell previously served as Director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office, United States Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women's Issues, and Chief of Staff to then-Second Lady of the United States Jill Biden.
David Recordon is an American technologist with an open standards and open source background. He is currently the Chief Technology Officer at Rebellion Defense. From January 2021 to September 2022, he served as the Director of Technology in the White House under U.S. President Joe Biden. He previously served in a similar role during the last two years of the presidency of Barack Obama. Between his roles in government, he worked as Vice President of Infrastructure and Security at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Earlier in his career, he played an important role in the development and evangelism for OpenID and OAuth.
After the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, multiple gun laws were proposed in the United States at the federal and state levels. The shooting renewed debate about gun control. The debates focused on requiring background checks on all firearm sales, and on passing new and expanded assault weapon and high-capacity magazine bans.
Kiran Arjandas Ahuja is an American attorney and activist who served as the director of the United States Office of Personnel Management (OPM). She served as the chief of staff to the OPM director from 2015 to 2017. She assumed that position after serving for six years as the director of the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. An Indian-born American, she has also been a lawyer with the United States Department of Justice and a founding director of a non-profit, the National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum. In 2017, she became the CEO of Philanthropy Northwest.
The political positions of Kamala Harris are reflected by her United States Senate voting record, public speeches, and interviews. Harris served as the junior senator from California from 2017 to 2021. On August 11, 2020, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden selected her as his running mate in the 2020 United States presidential election, running against incumbent U.S. president Donald Trump and vice president Mike Pence. With Biden's victory, Harris became vice president. She announced her candidacy in the 2024 United States presidential election after Biden chose not to run for reelection on July 21, 2024.
The inauguration of Joe Biden as the 46th president of the United States took place on Wednesday, January 20, 2021, on the West Front of the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. It was the 59th inauguration and marked the commencement of Joe Biden's only term as president and Kamala Harris' only term as vice president. Biden took the presidential oath of office, before which Harris took the vice presidential oath of office.
Elizabeth Marie Allen is an American political advisor who served as under secretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs in the Biden administration. She had previously served in his administration as assistant secretary of state for global public affairs. She was White House deputy communications director during the Obama administration. Allen resigned from the State Department on August 2, 2024, to take up a role as chief of staff to Tim Walz, the then-unannounced running mate of Democratic presidential candidate and incumbent Vice President Kamala Harris.
Joe Biden assumed office as the 46th president of the United States on January 20, 2021. The president has the authority to nominate members of his Cabinet to the United States Senate for confirmation under the Appointments Clause of the United States Constitution.
Julie Chávez Rodriguez is an American political rights activist and was the campaign manager for Vice President Kamala Harris's 2024 presidential campaign, transitioning to that role from President Joe Biden's 2024 re-election campaign.
The presidential transition of Joe Biden began on November 7, 2020, and ended on January 20, 2021. Unlike previous presidential transitions, which normally take place during the roughly 10-week period between the election in the first week of November and the inauguration on January 20, Biden's presidential transition was shortened somewhat because the General Services Administration under the outgoing first Trump administration did not recognize Biden as the "apparent winner" until November 23.
White House Gender Policy Council is a department within the White House Office for the advancement of gender equity and equality in both domestic and foreign policy development and implementation. It was established upon the inauguration of the Biden administration., and was initially co-chaired by Jennifer Klein and Julissa Reynoso Pantaleón.
The social policy of the Joe Biden administration is intended to improve racial equity, increase access to safe and legal abortions, tighten restrictions on gun sales, among other aims. A number of policies aim to reverse the former policies of President Donald Trump, including the "Muslim" travel ban and loosened anti-discriminatory policies relating to LGBT people.
Josh M. Hsu is a Taiwanese American attorney and political advisor who served as special assistant to the president and counsel to Vice President Kamala Harris from January 2021 to January 2023. In August 2020, Hsu joined the presidential transition of Joe Biden as director of judicial nominations.
The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act is a United States federal law, passed in 2022. It implemented several changes to the mental health system, school safety programs, and gun control laws. Gun control laws in the bill include extended background checks for firearm purchasers under the age of 21, clarification of federal firearms license (FFL) requirements, funding for state red flag laws and other crisis intervention programs, further criminalization of arms trafficking and straw purchases, and partial closure of the gun show loophole and boyfriend loophole. It was the first federal gun control legislation enacted in 28 years.
The Partnership for Central America (PCA) is a public–private partnership focused on economic development in the Northern Triangle of Central America countries addresses the economic roots of migration with job creation and social programs. The Partnership is a registered 501(c)3 non-profit organization that was launched in May 2021 with Vice President Kamala Harris in support of the White House Call to Action to the Private Sector to Deepen Investment in the Northern Triangle.
Regina LaBelle is a professor and the director of the Addiction and Public Policy Initiative at the Georgetown University Law Center's O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law. She was the acting director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) from January 20, 2021 to November 5, 2021, and the only woman to ever lead this office. She was named deputy director and served as acting director by President Joe Biden on the first day of his presidency. Prior to her work with the Biden Administration, she was the Chief of Staff of ONDCP under President Barack Obama.
Lynn Rosenthal, M.P.A., is an American policy maker, expert, activist, and consultant for gender-based violence, sexual assault, and domestic violence serving as the first White House Advisor on Violence Against Women appointed by President Barrack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden in 2009. Rosenthal is the Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Office of Population Affairs and the director of the Office of Adolescent Health. At the Department of Health and Human Services, Rosenthal is the Director of Sexual Violence and Gender-Based Violence. Rosenthal serves as the president of The Center for Family Safety and Healing. Previously, Rosenthal was the director of Violence Against Women Initiatives for the Biden Foundation in 2017.
Root Causes Strategy (RCS) or U.S. Strategy to Address the Root Causes of Migration in Central America is a federal government/private sector approach to address the root causes of illegal immigration into the United States from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras (collectively called the Northern Triangle of Central America).