President Joe Biden signed an executive order on Sept. 26 to crack down on 3D-printed guns and improve active shooter drills in schools throughout the country.
Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris discussed the order during a joint event on gun violence at the White House on Thursday.
The first prong of the order targets machine gun conversion devices—which can convert a pistol or semi-automatic gun into an automatic—and 3D-printed guns.
Under federal law, a machine gun is a firearm that fires continuously while the trigger is depressed.
Commonly called “Glock switches” or “auto sears,” machine gun conversion devices are illegal after-market parts that alter a gun’s trigger to allow legal semi-automatic firearms to operate as illegal, fully automatic weapons.
The White House noted that, between 2017 and 2021, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives recovered 5,454 guns that had been converted to match or “exceed the rate of fire of many military machineguns with a single engagement of the trigger.”
In the order, Biden indicated he would like the law expanded to also ban devices like bump stocks that increase a shooter’s rate of fire but don’t mechanically alter the gun. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that bump stocks are not machine guns under current federal law.
“The Vice President and I strongly disagreed with the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down an important gun safety regulation on bump stocks—the device used in the shooting at a crowded music festival in Las Vegas—and called on Congress to clarify that this dangerous accessory is a machinegun,” Biden stated in the order.
Harris said more work needs to be done to make sure all Americans feel protected in public spaces.
“I believe the right to be safe is a civil right, and that the people of America have a right then, to live, work, worship and learn without fear of violence—including gun violence—and yet, our nation is experiencing an epidemic of gun violence,” Harris said.
The executive order targets 3D-printed firearms built with 3D printers using computer code downloaded from the internet. They lack serial numbers, making them difficult for law enforcement to trace.
Unserialized guns are often referred to as “ghost guns.”
Through the order, the White House will establish an emerging firearms threats task force that will generate a report within 90 days to assess the threat of these guns, how federal agencies can mobilize to combat, detect, and confiscate them, and congressional funding projections to limit these weapons.
The order’s second portion aims to improve active school shooter drills in the nation’s schools. The Biden administration has reported that schools lack adequate resources for conducting these drills and that parents fear potential trauma for students from the drills.
Biden’s order directs the secretaries for the Departments of Education, Health and Human Services, and Homeland Security—in coordination with Attorney General Merrick Garland—to create and publish informational resources for schools to reduce and minimize trauma from shooter drills and gives them 110 days to do so.
Biden and Harris also discussed additional executive orders that will advocate safe gun storage, promote red flag laws, bolster community violence intervention funding, announce states that may allow Medicaid to pay health providers for parental and caregiver counseling on firearm safety and injury prevention, and improve the background check system.
Harris is campaigning on signing universal background checks and a ban on so-called assault weapons. Both would require congressional approval—a difficult task without solid Democratic majorities in both chambers.
“We know how to stop these tragedies, and it is a false choice to suggest you are either in favor of the Second Amendment or you want to take everyone’s guns away. I am in favor of the Second Amendment,” Harris said ahead of Biden’s signing the order.
Biden agreed and said it was time to pursue a ban on so-called assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.
Second Amendment advocacy groups dismissed the order as nothing more than campaign rhetoric.
“This Executive Order is just one more attempt by the Biden-Harris Administration to deflect attention from their soft-on-crime policies that have emboldened criminals in our country. The orders are notably heavy on election-year rhetoric and light on substance,” Randy Kozuch, Executive Director of the National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action, wrote in a statement on Thursday.
Erich Pratt, senior vice president of Gun Owners of America (GOA), said the order will backfire on Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign. In a statement on the GOA website, Pratt lists what he says are elements of the order that infringe on Second Amendment rights instead of dealing with violent criminals.
“The White House just made a huge mistake by reminding gun owners of Kamala’s radical, gun-grabbing agenda, with the election a mere month or so away. Kamala Harris just claimed responsibility for each infringement—every banned gun and part—by ATF in the last four years, so we are pushing back and calling her out,” Pratt wrote.
During his term, Biden signed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act in 2022 that strengthened background checks for those purchasing guns between the ages of 18 and 21, made it a federal offense to buy guns through straw purchases or trafficking, and specified the status of a federally licensed firearm dealer.
Last year, Biden established the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, which has been overseen by Harris.
