Biden order hopes to curb 3D guns, improve active shooter drills in schools

By Andrea Shalal

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Joe Biden will sign an executive order on Thursday to combat increasing threats from 3D printed and converted firearms and improve schools’ active shooter drills, the White House said.

Biden’s order sets up a new federal task force to assess the threat posed by machine gun conversion devices, which enable handguns or other semi-automatic firearms to match or exceed the rate of fire of many military machine guns, and 3D-printed firearms that have no serial numbers, making them hard to trace.

A mass shooting on Saturday in Alabama that killed four people involved a gun conversion device, police believe, sparking calls for new laws there.

The order also directs federal agencies to develop and publish within 110 days information for U.S. schools, colleges and universities on how to create, implement, and evaluate evidence-informed active shooter drills. Most U.S. states require schools to conduct mass shooting drills, but some research has found them ineffective and traumatic to students.

Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will announce the order at the White House, their first gun-related event together since the Democratic president named Harris to oversee an office on gun violence prevention created one year ago, a White House official said.

Harris replaced Biden in July as the Democratic presidential candidate in the Nov. 5 U.S. election and has brought new momentum to the race, but she is still closely tied with Donald Trump, her Republican challenger, in many key states, polls show.

Democrats largely favor stricter gun laws as a way to reduce deaths from gun violence, while Republicans generally oppose stricter laws, citing the right to bear arms established in the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment.

Trump will continue to protect gun rights, an advisor said after an assassination attempt on the former U.S. president in July.

PUBLIC HEALTH CRISIS

The White House event will be attended by gun violence survivors, activists and long-time allies of Biden, who has worked to reduce gun violence for more than three decades, the official said.

The new order is part of a broader push launched by Biden and Harris – both of whom are gun owners – to reduce gun violence since taking office in 2021. Biden signed the first major gun legislation in decades in July 2022, which aimed to block gun sales to domestic abusers, among others.

The U.S. surgeon general declared gun violence a public health crisis in June, calling for more research funding, better mental health access and other steps such as secure storage.

Machine gun conversion devices are already illegal, but White House officials say law enforcement officials are seeing them show up at crime scenes because they are small, cheap to produce – for as little as 40 cents – and easy to install.

Law enforcement officers have also reported concerns about unserialized, 3D-printed firearms that can be printed from computer code downloaded from the internet. Some can be made undetectable by security magnetometers.