Washington Examiner – by Paul Bedard
President Joe Biden is teaming with anti-gun advocate George Soros and several other liberal groups in his bid to reduce violent crime by focusing on guns and legal gun sellers.
Included in his plan is hosting meetings over the next 18 months in 15 high-crime cities where Soros’s Open Society Foundation and 12 other pro-gun-control groups will spell out “best practices” to help city leaders with the explosion of violence in their cities.
A scan of the policies of those 13 groups shows that all are anti-gun and, like Biden, blame firearms for violence plaguing some cities.
The list does not include any gun industry groups, notably the National Shooting Sports Foundation, which has several programs to cut crime and stop guns from getting into the wrong hands through straw or other illegal purchases.
The groups Biden chose are proponents of gun registration and bans.
Open Society, for example, has called for a new 1994-style ban on popular semi-automatic sporting rifles.
In describing its teaming with the groups, a White House fact sheet read, “A group of philanthropies that have been leaders on this issue will support this collaborative learning network by deploying [community violence intervention] experts to provide training and technical assistance, identify best practices, integrate proven and innovative public-health approaches, and help local community-based organizations scale CVI efforts this summer and beyond.”
The move comes as Biden is trying to install an anti-gun advocate from the Giffords organization as the head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Second Amendment advocates predicted that the groups Biden planned to team with would be proponents of gun control and not have any industry representatives.
Soros is a well-known funder of anti-gun groups. Over one 10-year period, for example, he spent nearly $7 million funding them. He has funded at least one other gun control group being tapped by Biden, the Joyce Foundation.