Gun violence among top issues in DNC Platform

Delegates at the Democratic National Convention approved their platform Monday night and made efforts to curb gun violence a top priority.

The 92-page 2024 DNC Platform touted the work President Joe Biden and the Democratic nominee to replace him, Vice President Kamala Harris, have made on combating the scourge of gun violence in America.

A little over five pages of the platform have been dedicated to what the Democrats pledge to do about gun safety, improving policing and public safety, rehabilitating people released from prisons and protecting women against violence.

"All Americans deserve freedom from fear: to be confident that their children will come home safely from the store or the playground, and to know that their loved one will come home safely from their shift policing the streets," the draft platform states.

The document was written before Biden left the 2024 race and was approved by the DNC's Rules Committee in July. It was not updated significantly since Harris replaced Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket in late July.

"It makes a strong statement about the historic work that President Biden and Vice President Harris have accomplished hand-in-hand and offers a vision for a progressive agenda that we can build on as a nation and as a Party as we head into the next four years," The DNC said in a statement released Monday.

Meanwhile, there was little acknowledgment of the nation's gun violence scourge at the Republican National Convention last month, despite GOP presidential nominee former President Donald Trump being the victim of a would-be assassin wielding an AR-15-style rifle.

In the 2024 GOP convention platform, there was no mention of firearm violence or gun control. In 2020, however, the party's platform contained three paragraphs supporting reciprocity legislation allowing Americans to carry firearms in all 50 states regardless of which state they received a carry permit, and opposing an assault weapons ban, "frivolous" lawsuits against gun manufacturers and "any effort to deprive individuals of their right to keep and bear arms without due process of law."

The National Rifle Association has endorsed the Trump-Vance ticket.

"Now, more than ever, freedom and liberty need courageous and virtuous defenders," Doug Hamlin, executive vice president and CEO of the NRA, said in a statement in July. "President Trump and Senator Vance have the guts and the grit to stand steadfast for the Second Amendment."

Harris, who was appointed in September 2023 by Biden to oversee the first-ever White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, made it clear in her first presidential campaign rally in Milwaukee that gun control is a top priority.

"We who believe that every person should have the freedom to live safe from the terror of gun violence will finally pass red flag laws, universal background checks and an assault weapons ban," Harris said at the Milwaukee rally.

The DNC Platform touts the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the first major gun safety law enacted in 30 years that Biden signed in June 2022, about a month after a teenage gunman killed 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. The law enhances background checks for gun buyers under 21, closes the so-called "boyfriend loophole" to prevent people convicted of domestic abuse from purchasing guns and allocates $750 million to help states implement "red flag laws" to remove firearms from people deemed to be dangerous to themselves and others.

According to the Gun Violence Archive (GVA) a website that tracks shootings across the nation, 10,759 people have died this year from wilful malicious or accidental shootings. In 2023, a total of 18,854 people were killed in malicious or accidental shootings, and 20,390 in 2022.

At least 19 people have been killed this year in 352 mass shootings -- which the GVA defines as four or more people shot or killed in a single incident, not including the shooter. In 2023, 40 people were killed in 656 mass shootings, and 36 people were fatally shot in 646 mass shootings that occurred in 2022, according to the GVA.

More than 900 children 17 years old and younger, including 154 under the age of 11, have been killed in shootings this year, according to the GVA. In 2023, 1,682 children 17 years old and younger were killed in shootings, and 1,694 were fatally shot in 2022, according to the GVA.

The DNC Platform emphasizes that under Biden, the nation's 2023 murder rate saw the sharpest decrease in history and violent crime fell to one of the lowest in 50 years.

The Major Cities Police Association's Violent Crime Survey found double-digit declines in homicide across nearly 70 of America's largest cities in 2023 compared to 2022. But the numbers are still not as low as they were before the pandemic, officials said.

"The gun violence epidemic is a scourge ripping apart our communities; it is the leading cause of death for children and teens," the DNC Platform states. "Mass shootings at schools, grocery stores, houses of worship, dancehalls, and nightclubs, as well as daily gun violence at home and on streets, devastate American families."

The DNC Platform states that the Democrats are determined to establish national universal background checks and red flag laws to keep guns out of the hands of people deemed a danger to themselves and others. According to the platform, the party also wants a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, to require safe storage of guns and end the gun industry's immunity from liability "so gunmakers can no longer escape accountability."

"And, because the gun violence epidemic is a public health crisis, we will fund gun violence research across the Centers for Disease Control [CDC] and National Institutes of Health [NIH] as well as community violence interventions," the DNC platform states.