The BBC reports that Obama’s executive actions involve background checks for all gun sellers, overturning current exemptions to some online and gun show sellers, states providing information on people disqualified from buying guns due to mental illness or domestic violence, increased workforce for the Federal Bureau of Investigation to process background checks and hiring more than 230 new examiners.
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In 2015 alone, there were 330 reported mass shootings in the USA according to the Gun Violence Archive, but the president acknowledged that his executive actions would not prevent all gun violence in the county.
Not only that, Gottlieb said it’s odd for the Obama administration to plead for more background checks when its existing approach to the issue has been lackadaisical. “Maryland is one of them”. Marco Rubio stated. “This executive order is just one more way to make it harder for law-abiding people to buy weapons or to be able to protect their families”.
The president said most Americans, including Republicans, want tougher background checks for gun owners.
Vernick said part of the president’s plan has implications for Maryland: Obama stated in his address that anyone “in the business of selling firearms must get a license and conduct background checks”. But there are a number of countries with higher murder rates than ours and stronger gun control laws.
“ATF is going to look at you more carefully”.
“I wish I could say that I was surprised by the President’s latest announcement to skirt Congress in order to push through his gun control agenda”. He also went down the list of mass shootings in the United States and the aftermath of grief that affected those involved. “We will closely review the details of the President’s executive “guidance” and continue to move forward commonsense reforms that reaffirm our commitment to the safety and the constitutional rights of every American”. Now that President Obama is in office and Frank Luntz has told everyone how great a reaction Republicans get when they oppose him, closing the gun show loophole isn’t so “reasonable” and “obvious”.
These potential actions have gun advocates in an unreasonable uproar that Obama is infringing on the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
Asked Tuesday why Republicans view Obama as being so hostile to the Second Amendment, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said simply, “purely politics”.
And GOP presidential candidates took shots at the president. Worthy, a retired Baltimore City police officer, said in her 13 years on the force, the majority of confiscated weapons were obtained illegally.
“It’s an issue that both (sides) are really going to want to talk about for the next couple of months, but I don’t know how much they’re going to want to talk about it in the fall”, Matthew Dowd, a former political adviser to President George W. Bush, said of the eventual presidential nominees.
Congress has been reluctant to pass any laws restricting gun ownership, facing pressure from gun owners and the powerful National Rifle Association.
Besides, what’s the pro-gun camp getting so riled up about?
“If anything is actually done, I assume it will be feel-good and it will have little impact”, he said.
Phillip Griffith, manager of Arundel Firearms & Pawn in Glen Burnie, said the government should deliver harsher punishment to lawbreakers and limit use of plea bargains.
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“When you live by the pen, you die by the pen and my pen has got an eraser”, he said. “The Constitution was written for laws to be made by Congress, and I think the president is bypassing that system when he issues executive orders”.
