Manhattan Institute fellow Charles Fain Lehman reacts to President Biden’s and Attorney General Garland’s remarks on the administration’s gun crime prevention strategy.
President Biden and his administration should be commended for acknowledging the nationwide violent crime spike and acting to address it. Added funding for hiring more officers is urgently needed, given the recent shrinkage of departments, and a welcome deviation from support for "defunding the police." Funding for certain evidence-based interventions, particularly Community Violence Reduction programs and Summer Youth Employment Programs, will likely help mitigate the problem as well.
But the administration has focused too much on guns as a driving cause: proposals to expand ATF enforcement are unlikely to reduce the violence in the short run, given the long average time between legal purchase and illegal use. And the evidence simply does not support the efficacy of policies like expanded background checks and a renewed assault weapons ban for reducing violent crime. More importantly, the administration has failed to acknowledge the unambiguous role played by agitation against police departments under the banner of the "defund the police" movement, which has discouraged police and encouraged offenders. It's vitally important that leaders from the local to the federal level make clear their support for policing as the bedrock of public safety, and strive to undo the depolicing that has taken place over the past year.
Related material:
- Ideas for the New Administration: Criminal Justice (Rafael Mangual, MI Issue Brief, January 2021)
- Biden Should Be Proud of His Record on Crime (Rafael Mangual, Wall Street Journal, April 2019)
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Charles Fain Lehman is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal.