Among the president’s proposals is an effort to better identify who should be required to be licensed as a gun dealer.
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“The NRA can be defeated, and the NRA will be defeated”, Warren said in a press call on January 6, according to The Hill.
Instead, the NRA reacted to the president’s comments via Twitter.
But the reality is that executive actions like these are an indication of presidential weakness – not dictatorial power.
Obama announced his latest strategy earlier this week to try to boost background checks for gun buyers, wiping away tears as he remembered the 20 children and six adults gunned down at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012. Those acquiring guns privately, in contrast, do not.
There’s no magic wand to solve gun violence in America, but neither is it immutable fate that 32,000 Americans die from firearms each year. These executive actions do little more than nudge various sellers who now operate outside the background check system back toward that system. There are several reasons for this.
“The main point, I think, that I want to make here is that everybody here is in favour of going after criminals, locking them up, making sure that we’re creating an environment where kids don’t turn into criminals and providing the support that they need”, Obama said.
On Thursday, Obama insisted he had no intention of taking their guns and said that he skeet shoots from time to time at Camp David, a presidential retreat near Washington.
“What I’ve said consistently throughout my presidency is I respect the Second Amendment, I respect the right to bear arms”. He’s attempting to shore up the Democratic liberal base before the next election and forestall the real possibility that his executive orders will be quickly reversed should a Republican win the White House. “Sometimes this happened a few blocks from my house, and I live in a pretty good neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago”. About 30% have been revoked by a subsequent president and another 2% overturned by congressional legislation. Because of the censored nature of the data, this probably understates how many EO’s have been actually revoked. Without trying to apportion blame, or even to accept Trump’s characterization that Obama has “given up” on the legislative process, the plain fact is that the president and Congress have not engaged successfully in the process of bargaining that is at the heart of the legislative process.
Obama’s most vocal adversary in the debate was not present, however. “Now it’s our job in Congress to show that there are millions of us who are willing to fight”. It can be costly to the aims in whose defense it is employed. “Obama singled out the National Rifle Association as one of the “loudest, shrillest voices” against gun control and told the audience “[that] the way we break the deadlock on this issue is when the NRA doesn’t have a stranglehold on Congress in this debate”.
“The NRA has convinced many of its members that somebody’s going to come grab your guns”, Obama said, describing it as a ploy to drive up sales of guns.
In a prime-time, televised town hall meeting Thursday, Obama fielded tough questions from high-profile gun control opponents and supporters alike, often answering with sympathy and without confrontation as he tried to reassure Americans there is a middle ground on a fiercely divisive issue.
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Doing otherwise, the president said, would condemn the United States to continue suffering through mass shootings, suicides, gang violence, domestic abuse and accidental shootings that have killed tens of thousands of Americans. Unfortunately, he is also not likely to be the last.
