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White House Gun Violence Prevention Website Goes Offline [1]

['Sophie Clark', 'Roger Marshall', 'Tom Rogers']

Date: 2025-01-22 09:10:08-05:00

Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.

Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content.

The web page for the Office of Gun Violence Prevention that was once on the White House website is now offline.

The page currently redirects to a 404 error message.

Why It Matters

The Office of Gun Violence Prevention was created by the Biden administration to "reduce gun violence, and to implement and expand upon key executive and legislative action taken to help save lives."

Now, with the website taken down, it appears as if President Trump is following through on his promise to the National Rifle Association (NRA) to terminate Biden's gun laws, despite gun violence rates falling rapidly during the previous president's administration.

The White House has been contacted via email for comment.

Screenshot of the White House website when searching for the Office of Gun Violence Prevention on January 22, 2025. Screenshot of the White House website when searching for the Office of Gun Violence Prevention on January 22, 2025. whitehouse.gov

What To Know

The Biden administration created the Office of Gun Violence Prevention to combat the gun violence crisis in America.

While in operation, the office had a £350 million mandate to work on solutions to combat community violence. It was also working on combating illegally created guns, including ghost guns, which was the type of firearm allegedly used by Luigi Mangione to kill UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson last year.

According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), between 2017 and 2023 "the number of ghost guns recovered in crimes surged nearly 1,600% with nearly 1,700 connected homicides and over 4,000 linked to other violent crimes."

The Office of Gun Violence Prevention also helped to drive down homicides by 13.5 percent, shut down over 800 non-compliant gun dealers and stopped over 500 illegal gun purchases.

NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban, NYC Mayor Eric Adams and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg examining seized ghost guns on September 27, 2023 in New York. NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban, NYC Mayor Eric Adams and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg examining seized ghost guns on September 27, 2023 in New York. NDZ/STAR MAX/IPx/STRMX

Despite being shot in the ear in July of 2024, Trump promised a room of NRA members in November 2024 that he would roll back several Biden administration policies, including ones that remove federal licenses from dealers who break gun laws, and regulations on stabilization devices that have been used in mass shootings.

One of the gun safety law removals proposed under this administration is the elimination of "red flag" laws, which allow for the temporary removal of firearms from someone who appears to pose an immediate risk to themselves or others. This policy is in the most recent Republican Study Committee (RSC) budget.

The RSC budget also calls for the paring back of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act and wants to mandate that the ATF destroys all records of firearm transactions from gun stores, and that federal firearm licensees should destroy all records of firearm transactions if they go out of business.

The Office of Gun Violence Prevention page is not the only one on the White House website to go missing. The website also comes up with a 404 error message for pages that hosted the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, biographies for former Presidents and a Spanish-language version of the site.

A spokesperson for the White House told reporters that the website is being developed and edited, and that they are in the process of reloading content. He also said they are committed to getting the Spanish translation section of the site back online.

It is unclear at the moment exactly how much content will be re-uploaded to the site. The first Trump administration fully removed pages about LGBTQ+ issues and climate change from the site while in office.

The Trump administration website can be compared with the archived version of the Biden administration site, which can be found at bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov. However, even the Spanish version of the archived Biden site leads back to the same 404 error page on the new Trump website.

What People Are Saying

Principal White House deputy press secretary Harrison Fields: "It's day two. We are in the process of developing, editing and tweaking the White House website. As part of this ongoing work, some of the archived content on the website went dormant. We are committed to reloading that content in a short timeline."

President Trump said at an NRA meeting: "Every single Biden attack on gun owners and manufacturers will be terminated on my very first week back in office, perhaps my first day."

Kris Brown, president of nonprofit Brady, which campaigns against gun violence said: "The White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention wasn't about politics—it was about strengthening the government's ability to protect Americans (more than 300 of whom are shot every single day) from guns. By shuttering it, Trump is putting the interests of the gun lobby above our kids, our communities and our country."

What Happens Next

Trump has not announced any plans to improve gun safety in the United States. If his agenda on gun violence is aligned with the proposals set out in Project 2025, then the country will instead see a mass loosening of gun restrictions.

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