PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — President Joe Biden is turning his focus to violent crime in America’s major cities, as he visits New York City on Thursday to unveil a federal effort to crack down on untraceable guns and firearms trafficking along the East Coast “iron pipeline.”
Police departments across the country have been struggling against a stunning surge in gun violence that has already claimed scores of lives this year, including those of police officers. In Philadelphia this year, there have been 44 homicides. At least 37 people were killed, and 146 wounded, by gunfire in the city, according to city data.
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While in New York, Biden plans to announce new actions to control the flow of firearms used in violent crimes and to support state and local law enforcement in removing guns and repeat shooters off the streets. Biden also will stop at a school to meet with violence intervention leaders.
At the same time, Biden, a Democrat, is trying to dispel criticism from the right that he hasn't been tough enough on crime.
But his modest announcements — expanding on initiatives already underway and offering suggestions for localities on how to spend federal dollars — demonstrate the limits to what he can do when there is no appetite in Congress to pass gun legislation. The strongest effort in recent years failed, even after 20 children and six adults were killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.
Biden also is trying to navigate the complex politics of the moment: finding ways to combat crime while also pushing for greater accountability after killings of Black people by police. The two efforts do not have to be at odds, though they are often billed that way.
All this unfolds against the backdrop of recent polls showing that Americans are increasingly concerned about crime and that Republicans have an advantage over Democrats as the party that would do a better job dealing with it. The White House is pushing back against GOP efforts to paint Biden as soft.
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“I think we all agree or should agree that violent crime is a serious problem,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said this week. “Our view is that instead of turning this into a political football, we need to be focused from the beginning of the president’s time in office on reducing crime and keeping our communities safe.”
Guns are at the center of the debate as the nation grapples with homicides that spiked nationally in 2020. In Philadelphia, 2021 was officially the deadliest year on record for homicides, with 562 people killed at the hands of another. Homicides were up 12% from 2020, and 53% from 2019. More than five dozen of the homicide victims were children, 17 years old or younger.
Philadelphia Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw points to stolen firearms driving the violence. "We know illegal crime guns are driving a lot of the violence that we are seeing," she said.
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Americans purchased a record number of firearms in 2020. Law enforcement officers recovered historically high numbers of firearms last year and are coming across more firearms stripped of serial numbers, making them impossible to trace.
Some early data suggests that the period between when a gun was purchased and used in a crime and recovered by police has shortened, compared with earlier years.
To combat this, the Biden administration is clamping down more on traders of “ghost guns,” homemade firearms that lack serial numbers used to trace them and that are often purchased without a background check. Officials say the use and availability of ghost guns has been a growing problem in Philadelphia and other cities around the country.
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The Department of Justice is launching a National Ghost Gun Enforcement Initiative, which is meant to ensure that prosecutors and investigators have the resources they need, and that they can bring federal charges against people who commit crimes using these weapons.
The Justice Department is also working to stop the movement of guns north along the I-95 corridor from Southern states with lax gun laws. Federal prosecutors will prioritize cases of those who sell or transfer guns used in violent crime and, if Biden's budget is enacted, get specific agents dedicated to the effort.
Five federal strike forces are focusing on significant firearms trafficking corridors that channel guns into New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area and Washington, D.C. Federal agents are embedded in homicide units in police departments around the country, and the U.S. Marshals Service regularly conducts fugitive sweeps to arrest people with outstanding state or federal warrants.
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In May, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives will host police executives from across the country to collaborate on solutions to gun violence. But the agency has been without a permanent leader since 2013, and Biden's first nominee was rejected by Republicans and some moderate Democrats. There's no sign of a new nominee.
Biden has proposed a large increase in dollars for local community policing programs, and if his social spending agenda were to pass, even more funds would be made available — but that effort is stalled in Congress, too.
He's also encouraged cities to invest some of their COVID-19 relief money into policing and pushed alternative crime reduction steps such as increased community support and summer jobs for teenagers. He was expected to talk more about this effort on Thursday.
Biden will be joined in New York by Attorney General Merrick Garland, Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams, a former police captain. Once an outspoken critic of his own department and someone who was beaten by police as a teenager, Adams portrayed himself during his campaign as someone who could bridge the divide between the New York Police Department and activists pushing for major change.