Obama guns

Thwarted by Congress, Obama to unveil new gun measures

The new executive actions are expected to face swift legal challenges.

By Sarah Wheaton

President Barack Obama on Tuesday will formally unveil new executive actions on gun violence that represent a modest attempt to tighten loopholes in gun laws but will still likely face quick legal challenges and could be vulnerable to reversal by a Republican White House.

The issue of gun violence has been a perpetual presence during Obama’s presidency due to a series of mass shootings that have grabbed national headlines, perhaps none more so than the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary that claimed the lives of 20 children and 6 adults.

Despite professing an unflinching commitment to curbing gun violence, Obama and Vice President Joe Biden have been thwarted by Congress and what Obama calls a lack of national will to change the way Americans think about guns.

Obama has issued more than 20 executive actions, including incentives for states to share background check information and directing the attorney general to review those types of individuals prohibited from having guns. But gun sales have only soared, with 2015 expected to have been a record year, as Americans fear new restrictions.

Likewise, the actions to be rolled out on Tuesday are not expected to have a huge impact.

The actions include a more detailed definition of which gun sellers must apply for a federal dealers license — and therefore conduct background checks for all sales, in a bid to close the so-called gun show loophole. The administration is also finalizing a few other rules that were stuck in a bureaucratic backlog, including new requirements for reporting guns lost or stolen in transit, and a measure that would allow more mental health records to be submitted to the federal background check registry by removing patient privacy limits.

The FBI is also adding 230 agents devoted to processing background checks — a 50 percent increase — as it moves toward automating the system.

White House Senior Adviser Valerie Jarrett hit the airwaves to promote the actions on Tuesday morning, telling MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that Obama feels a need to act because Congress won’t.

“Nothing has frustrated him more than Congress’s unwillingness to act on this issue since he’s been in office,” Jarrett said. “We still want to put pressure on Congress to do the right thing and we’re going to need the American people to help us do that. But in the meantime the president is going to take the steps that he can to keep guns out of the wrong hands.”

But House Speaker Paul Ryan immediately blasted the forthcoming actions, and hinted on Monday that legal challenges were inevitable.

"While we don’t yet know the details of the plan, the president is at minimum subverting the legislative branch, and potentially overturning its will,” Ryan said in a statement. “His proposals to restrict gun rights were debated by the United States Senate, and they were rejected. No president should be able to reverse legislative failure by executive fiat, not even incrementally.”

Obama has often turned to executive actions, especially once he both chambers on Congress became controlled by Republicans, with many of his actions, including those on immigration reforms, now mired in court challenges.

Obama himself acknowledged the forthcoming legal debate, saying on Monday that he believes he is on solid ground.

“These are not only recommendations that are well within my legal authority and the executive branch, but they’re also ones that the overwhelming majority of the American people, including gun owners, support me doing," Obama told reporters after an Oval Office meeting on Monday with his top law enforcement officials.

The series of gun-related events this week represents one of Obama's largest pushes on gun control since the collapse of the effort that followed the 2012 Sandy Hook mass shooting. The White House is eager to fend off political attacks and to minimize the lobbying from pro-guns-rights groups, and so is preparing a heavy public campaign to explain his moves. On Monday, he met with Attorney General Loretta Lynch, FBI Director James Comey and the head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. He will hold a White House ceremony to announce the measures on Tuesday. And on Thursday, Obama partners with CNN for an hourlong town hall to discuss gun violence in prime time.

While Obama cannot unilaterally required universal background checks, top administration officials predicted the new guidelines would sweep in all but the most casual sellers. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms will issue new guidelines about what it means to be “engaged in the business” of selling guns, rather than merely selling them as a hobby. It’s part of a bid to step up enforcement of background check rules not only at informal settings like flea markets and gun shows, but also the Internet — including the dark web.

The administration could not say how many people would likely be affected by the new measures.

Complicating the White House’s agenda is the intense pushback that is only amplified by the GOP presidential candidates on the campaign trail.

Republicans are already decrying the moves as overreach before they are announced, condemning Obama’s forthcoming actions as lawless.

Donald Trump predicted that it would soon become impossible for Americans to exercise their Second Amendment rights to carry firearms. Marco Rubio warned that executive actions would restrict the rights of "law-abiding citizens, not the criminals or terrorists who target them."

"The president has not even attempted to point to a single mass shooting these actions would have prevented, because there isn’t one," the Florida senator added.

Even as gun control advocates have praised the White House’s efforts, they pledge to still push Congress and Obama to do more.

The National Rifle Association, meanwhile, has blanketed the airwaves with ads warning of “a government that would disarm us during the age of terror.”