White House launches emergency response protocol for mass shootings

Source: Politico

04/18/2024 06:04 PM EDT


After months of tending to foreign policy conflagrations, sticky inflation numbers and various other pop-up crises, the White House is zeroing back in on a key part of its domestic agenda: gun violence. A new emergency response team will meet in person for the first time on Friday in the Roosevelt Room, where it will unveil a new protocol for responding to mass shootings and surges in community gun violence, according to plans first shared with POLITICO.

Participating in the initiative led by the White House’s Office of Gun Violence Prevention will be officials from the FBI and the departments of Justice, Health and Human Services, Education, and Housing and Urban Development as well as FEMA, AmeriCorps and the Small Business Administration.

The meeting comes during a time of year when the nation has witnessed some of its worst gun tragedies. Saturday is the 25th anniversary of the Columbine shooting, and, in just a few weeks, it will be two years since the mass shooting in a Buffalo supermarket. Soon after that, families in Uvalde, Texas, will mark the second anniversary without their loved ones.

“We know history is a teacher of when we need to be prepared, and when we need to have our resources ready to go to deploy. And so the urgency of the meeting is to ensure that the team, the coordination, and that our approach is in place so that we’re prepared before tragedy strikes,” said Gregory Jackson, the Office of Gun Violence Prevention’s deputy director.

Read more: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/04/18/white-house-launches-emergency-response-protocol-for-mass-shootings-00153182