President Obama has announced that Vice President Joe Biden will lead an interagency panel intended to formulate potential methods “to reduce the epidemic of gun violence that plagues this country every single day.” The panel will be expected to have concrete proposals ready for the President to review by January. Biden does have experience in this matter as he led the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act through the Senate in 1994. “This is not some Washington commission,” said President Obama. “This is not something where folks are going to be studying the issue for six months and publishing a report that gets read and then pushed aside. This is a team that has a very specific task, to pull together real reforms right now.” Obama conceded that it will not be possible to eliminate all such violence, but said “that can’t be an excuse not to try.”
Obama also said the panel will address not only gun regulation policy but also mental health issues and “a culture that all too often glorifies guns and violence.”
“This time, the words need to lead to action,” he said. “We know this is a complex issue that stirs deeply held passions and political divides. . . . But the fact that this problem is complex can no longer be an excuse for doing nothing.”
