(NewsNation) — President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris announced the creation of a federal office of gun violence prevention during an event Friday.
Harris, a former prosecutor and state attorney general, will oversee the office, which fulfills the demands of gun safety activists who endorsed Biden for president in 2024.
“We are all gathered here today for a simple reason: we agree that in a civil society people must be able to shop in a grocery store, walk down the street, or sit peacefully in a classroom and be safe from gun violence,” Harris said. “Instead our nation is being torn apart by the tragedy of it all.”
Harris drew on her experience as a former prosecutor in her remarks, saying she has seen with her own eyes what a bullet does to a human body.
“We cannot normalize any of this,” Harris said. “These are not simply statistics — these are our children, our brothers and sisters, our mothers and fathers.”
Stefanie Feldman, a longtime policy adviser to President Biden on gun violence prevention, will serve as director of the office.
This office will coordinate efforts across the federal government, offer help to states dealing with increased gun violence and work on the implementation of the sweeping bipartisan gun legislation signed into law last year.
Biden has been vocal about encouraging Congress to act on gun violence, and has pushed for a ban on “assault weapons.” He did so again Friday.
“It’s time again to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines,” Biden said. “If you need 80 shots and a magazine, you shouldn’t own a gun.”
Referencing the fact that guns are now the number one killer of children in America, Biden said this new office will save lives.
“We’ve reached that point today, in my view, where the safety of our kids from gun violence is on the ballot,” Biden said.
Rep. Maxwell Frost, a Florida Democrat who is the first Gen-Z member of Congress, wrote legislation with Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., to create an office dedicated to gun violence prevention.
Speaking Friday, Frost said, “It feels good to be a part of a winning movement.”
Frost said he’s often asked what got him involved in this kind of work.
“The answer is quite simple. I didn’t want to get shot in school,” Frost said. “I was 15 years old when a shooter walked into Sandy Hook Elementary School and murdered 20 children and six teachers. And like millions of kids, I went to school the next day with anxiety and fear that my life would be taken, my friend’s lives would be taken and my family’s life would be taken by senseless gun violence.”
For young people and marginalized communities, Frost said, this is a matter of survival.
“We fight because we love — because when you love somebody, you want them to live free of gun violence. That is what true freedom is,” Frost said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.