By Andrea Shalal
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden will sign an executive order on Thursday to combat increasing threats from firearms and improve school-based active shooter drills, while setting tight deadlines for further action, the White House said.
Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will announce the order at the White House, their first gun-related event together since Biden named Harris to oversee an office on gun violence prevention created one year ago, a White House official said.
The event will be attended by gun violence survivors, activists and long-time allies of Biden, who has worked to reduce gun violence for over three decades, the official said.
The new order is part of a broader push launched by Biden and Harris – both of whom are gun owners – to reduce gun violence since taking office in 2021.
The U.S. surgeon general declared gun violence a public health crisis in June, calling for more research funding, better mental health access and other steps such as secure storage.
Harris, who became the Democratic nominee in the Nov. 5 election after Biden dropped out in July, has often spoken about the need to reduce gun violence during her campaign rallies.
Democrats largely favor stricter gun laws as a way to reduce deaths from gun violence, while Republicans generally oppose stricter laws, citing the right to bear arms established in the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment.
The order sets up a new federal task force to assess the threat posed by machine gun conversion devices, which enable handguns or other semi-automatic firearms to match or exceed the rate of fire of many military machine guns, and 3D-printed firearms that have no serial numbers, making them hard to trace.
The task force will also examine whether federal agencies have the legal and operational capacities to detect, intercept, and seize such weapons. It is due to report its findings in 90 days, just before the Christmas holiday.
Machine gun conversion devices are already illegal, but White House officials say law enforcement officials are seeing them show up at crime scenes because they are small, cheap to produce for as little as 40 cents, and easy to install.
Law enforcement officers have also reported concerns about unserialized, 3D-printed firearms that can be printed from computer code downloaded from the Internet. Some can be made undetectable by security magnetometers.
The order also directs federal agencies to develop and publish within 110 days information for U.S. schools, colleges and universities on how to create, implement, and evaluate evidence-informed active shooter drills, which parents often say is traumatic for their children.
(Reporting by Andrea Shalal; editing by Miral Fahmy)
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