Prepare to be shocked. President Joe Biden has tapped an anti-police activist to head up the brand-spanking new Office of Gun Violence Prevention. The new initiative, which will be overseen by Vice President Kamala Harris, is intended to employ solutions to decrease the amount of gun-related violence occurring across the country.
They've tapped a curious choice to help lead the effort. Greg Jackson, a former left-wing activist, has quite a history of advocating against funding law enforcement. The Biden administration is touting the new office as a critical step in addressing violent crime, but the presence of someone like Jackson underscores what others have seen: This is merely an effort to attack the right to keep and bear arms, not to deal with gun violence.
The Biden administration announced the formation of the new office last week.
A leader of President Joe Biden’s anti-gun violence initiative is a former left-wing activist who decried larger police budgets in the wake of the George Floyd crime wave.
Biden launched the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention on Sept. 22, as part of his administration's effort to "combat the epidemic of gun violence that is tearing our families, our communities, and our country apart." Officially helmed by Vice President Kamala Harris, the initiative will be led in part by Greg Jackson, the former executive director of the left-wing Community Justice Action Fund.
The president lauded Jackson and Rob Wilcox, whom Biden also tapped for the office, for "being advocates for change." But the change Jackson advocates for puts him at odds with a major White House stance.
Jackson has attacked police departments and their budgets throughout his career, including in a January 2021 University of Maryland policing seminar when he lamented that he is "struggling to survive while … police budgets thrive." That same year, Jackson participated in an Obama Foundation webinar entitled "Re Imagining Policing," during which he touted "community-led violence intervention and prevention strategies" in place of traditional law enforcement. The goal, Jackson said, is to "ultimately reduce the need for policing."
Jackson has also been involved in conversations regarding the reimagining of policing. In 2021, he touted community-led violence intervention and prevention strategies as alternatives to traditional law enforcement. The underlying objective is to decrease the necessity for policing, which seems to contradict Biden’s stated support for traditional law enforcement.
The new official is also affiliated with the Community Justice Action Fund, a leftist organization that opposes increased funding for law enforcement agencies. Backed by George Soros, it has openly argued in favor of governments divesting from aggressive policing practices. The fact that the organization scrubbed Jackson’s bio from its website seems to suggest that the White House might understand that his positions might be controversial, given the issue he is tasked with addressing.
There is merit to the notion that policing in America needs to be reformed. But this does not truly appear to be Jackson’s goal. Folks like him seek to eliminate policing and replace it with something that could be worse, no matter how good it sounds. Yes, community action is also necessary to preventing crime, but when it comes to violent offenders, there is some level of policing that is needed, which underscores what many believe the new office’s true objective is.
The reality, as I’ve stated before, is that the Biden administration’s new office has little to do with curbing gun-related violence and everything to do with imposing more gun control measures that will make it harder for law-abiding Americans to obtain and carry firearms. Doing away with law enforcement without having a viable strategy to address violent criminals is contradictory to the stated objective of the new office. This will do nothing to stop these individuals from victimizing innocent civilians.
But again, if the true objective is to limit legal gun ownership, why would the White House bother to focus on the true root causes of violent crime? In fact, it makes more sense to allow these offenses to persist because it helps them continue making the case for more gun control. The official stance of the new office is to address gun violence. But as more details emerge, it becomes even more clear that the true goal is more gun control.