The Biden administration is launching a firearms initiative Thursday, focusing on encouraging school principals to spread the message of safely storing firearms in an effort to protect students.
Jill Biden and Education Secretary Miguel Cardona are taking the lead on passing down information to school leaders from across the country. Stefanie Feldman, the director of the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, told the Associated Press that safely storing guns can reduce school shootings.
“I know that there are some parents who wake up every day, drop their kids off for school, and while they’re watching their kids walk through that door, there’s just a little part of them that worries about gun violence during the school day,” Feldman said.
The Department of Education will give school principals letters that detail the importance of safely storing firearms, asking them to share the information with parents and their communities, while the Department of Justice will provide schools with educational guides on safes and how to disable a gun, according to the initiative.
Firearms are the No. 1 cause of death for children in the United States. The executive order is aiming to inform schools, parents, and communities about properly storing firearms, given that guns involved in most school shootings are taken from the shooter’s home.
“We know that most gun owners are responsible and most gun owners don’t want their guns to be stolen, don’t want a toddler to accidentally pick up their gun, don’t want their children who might be experiencing depression or suicidal ideation to kill themselves using a gun,” a senior administration official told Spectrum News 1. “So I actually have found in my conversations with gun owners across the country that the vast majority of gun owners support safe storage of firearms.”
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In December, Vice President Kamala Harris rolled out a gun violence prevention plan regulating how gun owners store their firearms. While the Biden administration continues to promote gun safety initiatives and propose strict gun legislation as a solution to gun violence and school shootings in communities across the country, many Republican lawmakers have pushed for more people to carry firearms.
Currently no federal laws are in place that require guns to be locked up, the Associated Press reported.
