"As federal officials have boasted about their efforts to fight crime in D.C. following the Trump administration's massive deployment of National Guard troops over the past several weeks, they have all pointed to the same statistic to prove their success: the number of guns recovered by law enforcement. " I am pleased to report another 105 arrests have been made and 12 illegal guns taken off the streets of Washington, DC," U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi tweeted last week, in what has become her near-daily account of police statistics."
"This tough talk on guns is a sudden departure from the administration's approach to gun regulation in Trump's second term. Trump has cut funding for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, shut down the Office of Gun Violence Prevention, issued a plan to slash two-thirds of the inspectors who monitor federally licensed gun dealers, and directed the FBI to narrow the definition of who is considered a fugitive of justice."
Federal officials emphasize gun recoveries and arrest counts as metrics of law enforcement success following a large National Guard deployment in Washington, D.C. High-profile tweets and White House statements present recovered guns and arrests as evidence of effective crime-fighting. Simultaneously, the administration has reduced regulatory capacity by cutting ATF funding, closing the Office of Gun Violence Prevention, proposing deep cuts to inspectors of federally licensed gun dealers, and directing the FBI to narrow the fugitive-of-justice definition. Republican state laws have expanded carry rights in 29 states, and legal changes in D.C. have downgraded certain unlicensed firearm carrying offenses.
Read at Slate Magazine
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