(Washington) US Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday took on a new role in preventing gun violence, likely to give her even more visibility before the 2024 election.
The 58-year-old Democrat will supervise the new “Office of Gun Violence Prevention” wanted by Joe Biden, who promised in a press release to “do everything [qu’il] can to combat the epidemic of gun violence that is tearing our families, our communities and our country apart. »
“There is no freedom when you don’t feel safe,” Kamala Harris said in the same statement.
The American president does not have the power to make truly restrictive regulations to limit the number of firearms, for example by banning assault rifles: this is a prerogative of Congress.
However, the Republicans, fiercely opposed to any regulation, actually have the power of veto.
Joe Biden is therefore trying to get around the problem through administrative and regulatory initiatives, of limited scope.
His decision to entrust the supervision of this new organization to Kamala Harris is significant, a little over a year before the presidential election, in which the 80-year-old Democrat and the vice-president are already candidates, on the same “ ticket”.
The vice-president has so far been responsible for politically complicated issues such as immigration.
With the issue of firearms, this former California prosecutor takes on a more mobilizing and more consensual role, at a time when her role in the campaign is expanding.
The first woman to become vice-president, and also the first representative in this position of both African-Americans and Americans of Asian origin, she, for example, recently embarked on a tour to “defend our freedoms” in several American universities.
She has most often been received with real enthusiasm, contrasting with the low popularity with which polls credit her.