President Barack Obama’s Executive Actions on Gun Control are meaningless

The United States is in the midst of a raging gun violence epidemic that is claiming 30,000 lives per year (82 per day) and costing $229 billion per year ($627 million per day). The tally includes long-term medical care, legal proceedings, prison costs and victims’ lost income.

We have a Congress that cannot — and will not — act to halt it and a President who could deal with it overnight but won’t.

 

Instead President Obama has decided to take meaningless executive actions that will do little, if anything, to curb gun violence and will have the effect of letting the epidemic rage on — even as “no training” laws for carriers grow in more states, open carry becomes more widespread and sensitive places are being forced to allow guns.

Pro-gun-control groups will be ecstatic about the upcoming executive actions, calling them a “first step.” But they are as misguided, pointless and meaningless as shutting down one Chipotle restaurant during an E. coli epidemic. The National Rifle Association will oppose such executive actions as it does on principle, and actually rejoice that the actions pose no pose real change to gun laws or threat to its guns everywhere all the time agenda.

The proposed executive actions include expanding the definition of who is “in the business” of selling guns and requiring any person or an entity “in the business” to be licensed and conduct buyer background checks. The executive actions partially close the private sales loophole, including a requirement that a gun be in a seller’s personal possession for at least a year to be considered part of their personal collection. Currently, sales from personal collections do not require background checks.

The proposed executive actions would also provide new funding to better enforce existing laws — the same laws that have enabled the gun violence epidemic. Can anyone explain that logic?

Even if these proposed executive actions would not be delayed by congressional lawsuits and obstructionism (as we saw with immigration actions), they overlook the fact that our background check system is so horribly flawed, the last 15 mass killers all passed their background checks. What is needed are REAL background checks, background checks that include interviews with people who know the purchaser (neighbors, family) and with the purchaser themselves. That is what is done in other countries and, notably, what the U.S. does with machine gun purchases. They work.

At the National Gun Victims Action Council, we could not be more opposed to these proposed executive actions because they do not get around the Congress “problem.” (The problem is that 34 senators from 17 pro-gun states will never allow gun safety legislation which has been demonstrated after Sandy Hook, Aurora, Tucson, Roseburg and San Bernardino.)

Obama has simply charged his staff to work around Congress. But executive orders that would cause real reform, like universal background checks (a background check for each gun sale), which 90% of the country — including gun owners — want, still require congressional approval. After Sandy Hook, the President invoked 23 executive orders and gun violence has only gotten worse.

Gun control

President Obama can and should use the powers granted to him under the National Emergencies Act to halt the gun violence epidemic and to protect the American people, just as he did after the California fires this spring (which killed three and destroyed 1,200 homes worth $1.2 billion) and the 2009 swine epidemic that hospitalized 20,000 and had killed 1,000.

For Obama to do anything without first declaring a national state of emergency leaves us all at enormous risk of becoming random victims of the gun violence epidemic.

To give Obama strength and support to declare a national state of emergency over guns, we need to get 500,000 people to sign our petition calling on him to do that. He needs to know we have his back. If you want to be part of the solution instead of being a spectator — or a potential victim by being in the wrong place at the wrong time — I urge you to go to our website — www.gunvictimsaction.org —and sign our petition asking him to declare a national state of emergency now.