Authored by Michael Clements via The Epoch Times,
Second Amendment advocates are celebrating, and gun control activists are decrying the apparent closing of the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention.
The Trump administration has not confirmed that the office, opened by an executive order from then-President Joe Biden in 2023, is closed.
The office’s website was down the day after President Donald Trump officially took office and remains inactive as of Jan. 23.
The White House did not respond to requests for comment by publication time.
Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.), who helped secure funding for the office, decried the closure in a post on the social media platform X.
In remarks on the floor of the House of Representatives on Jan. 22, Frost said the closure would cost lives.
“While lives are stolen, this admin is busy signing executive orders that have nothing to do with helping families and keeping them safe,” he said.
His office did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.
The gun control group Brady criticized the reported closure on its website, saying the office had reduced crime involving guns.
“The White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention wasn’t about politics—it was about strengthening the government’s ability to protect Americans [more than 300 of whom are shot every single day] from guns. By shuttering it, Trump is putting the interests of the gun lobby above our kids, our communities, and our country,” Brady president Kris Brown’s statement reads.
The office’s critics noted that it was staffed by longtime gun control activists and headed by Vice President Kamala Harris, who supports banning certain semiautomatic rifles and other gun control measures. They questioned the legitimacy of a government office they said was meant to block a constitutional right.
“That office should have never existed, and President Trump is again proving his commitment to our Second Amendment rights,” Mark Oliva, Director of Public Affairs for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, told The Epoch Times.
The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms echoed the sentiments in a Jan. 22 press release.
Committee Chairman Alan Gottlieb alleged the office was an attempt by Biden to bypass Congress and advance his gun-control agenda.
“Biden was trying to advance his gun control schemes with what amounted to a shadow government office because Congress rejected his extremist agenda of gun bans, gun registration, and other Second Amendment infringements,” Gottlieb stated in the press release.
When the office opened, Kristine Lucius, deputy assistant to the president and domestic policy adviser to the vice president, said its mission was to “prevent gun violence and save lives.”
Stefanie Feldman was the director of the office in addition to being a White House assistant to the president and staff secretary.
Greg Jackson, who led the Community Action Fund, which the White House described as “a national, survivor-led gun violence prevention organization focused exclusively on the impact on black and brown communities,” was one of two deputy directors.
Rob Wilcox, a senior director of federal government affairs at Everytown for Gun Safety who also worked for Brady and served on the board of directors of New Yorkers Against Gun Violence, was the second deputy director.