PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — President Joe Biden unveiled more steps Thursday to crack down on illegal guns flooding the East Coast, all in an effort to stem the surge of deadly gun violence.
The same scourge of gun violence we’ve seen and felt here in Philadelphia has been realized in other big cities across the country like New York and Chicago as well. So, President Joe Biden went to New York City to meet with new Mayor Eric Adams and others to detail his plan for addressing gun violence while specifically mentioning Philadelphia during his remarks.
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The president began by sharing the grim statistics nationwide. Over 300 Americans are shot per day and close to 110 die every day.
“In the town north of me, Philadelphia, and my much smaller town of Wilmington, Delaware, Washington, D.C., 64 children injured by gun violence so far this year, 26 killed. Enough is enough,” Biden said.
Police and community partnerships are central to the president’s plan.
“The answer is not to defund the police, it’s to give you the tools, the training, the funding to be partners, to be protectors,” Biden said.
Back home in Philly, CBS3 caught up with Max Milkman, organizing manager for CeaseFirePA, an organization dedicated to getting guns off the street. We asked about a term we keep hearing, ghost guns.
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“Ghost guns are firearms that are essentially multiple pieces that you can buy and assemble with limited training whatsoever. They have no serial number, there is no background check whatsoever because they’re essentially untraceable,” Milkman said.
The president mentioned them as well.
“If you commit a crime with a ghost gun, not only are state and local prosecutors gonna come after you but expect federal charges as well,” Biden said.
With this focus on guns, we asked Milkman why he thinks we’ve seen such a spike in gun-related crimes.
“The pandemic has fueled gun violence. We’ve seen that during the pandemic people have felt insecure in their homes or just are overall scared for their safety. And so we saw a surge in the amount of guns being purchased,” Milkman said.
The Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office says that 571 ghost guns were recovered in 2021. That’s nearly 10% of all firearm recoveries.
As for CeaseFirePA, they’re tackling all aspects of this epidemic from the reasons why people turn to violence, to healing and recovery.