How Many Executive Orders Did Obama Sign On Gun Control

After high-profile mass shootings, President Barack Obama has urged the American people to telephone call on Congress to pass measures that would restrict access to guns and, hopefully, reduce gun violence. But after multiple pleas, Congress hasn't acted, even later on the grisly mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December 2012.

Then Obama is now acting on his ain — with executive deportment.

"Every unmarried twelvemonth, more thirty,000 Americans take their lives cut short by guns," Obama said at a press conference on Tuesday. "We are the just advanced state on Earth that sees this kind of mass violence erupt with this kind of frequency."

Obama met with Chaser General Loretta Lynch on Monday to consider what he tin practise without congressional legislation to reduce gun violence in America, which kills many more people in the United states of america than other developed nations. In a press conference afterwards the coming together, White Firm officials announced a plan they had been working on for months behind the scenes to address gun violence.

The changes attempt to tighten — but don't close — what's widely (but misleadingly) known equally the "gun show loophole," besides as increase the efficiency of the federal background check system to avert cases from falling through. The executive deportment will also take smaller steps, ranging from improving the tracking of lost or stolen guns to encouraging technological improvements that will, in theory, brand firearms safer.

This would not exist the first time Obama has taken executive activeness on guns. In 2013, after Congress failed to pass gun command legislation post-obit the shooting at Sandy Claw Elementary School, Obama signed 23 executive actions and then a few follow-up actions that generally tightened the background bank check system.

Simply Obama's latest deportment announced to be the boldest, touching on one of the longest-running issues with federal gun control laws and a broader hot-button contend near what to do about America's extraordinary levels of gun violence.

In that location are risks to Obama acting without congressional approving. Critics of the administration take already suggested that they will claiming new executive actions in court. Not getting legislation in the books also means that a President Ted Cruz (or Marco Rubio, Donald Trump, and so on) could unilaterally reverse Obama's deportment. Presently before the announcement of the plan, a congressional Republican also threatened to block funding for the Justice Section to stop the executive actions.

The Obama assistants has pushed on anyhow, arguing in an electronic mail, "The president has made articulate the most impactful way to accost the crisis of gun violence in our country is for Congress to pass some common sense gun safety measures. But the president has also said he's fully aware of the unfortunate political realities in this Congress. That is why he has asked his team to scrub existing legal authorities to see if at that place'south whatsoever additional activeness we tin take administratively."

Obama is also taking his telephone call for more than deportment to the American people: On Thursday, he's participating in a CNN boondocks hall about guns.

What Obama's executive actions on guns will do

US Attorney General Loretta Lynch. — United states Chaser General Loretta Lynch.

Here'south what the Obama administration plans to do:

The federal authorities volition consequence guidance that will narrow who can sell guns without a federal license, based on an evaluation of the circumstances surrounding individual gun sales. The idea is to make enforcement of existing federal laws stricter so fewer people — whether gun sellers or buyers — have advantage of the "gun show loophole."
The FBI will hire more than 230 more people to aid run groundwork checks — an increase of more than 50 percent to the electric current staff. Lynch said this was in part needed to keep upwards with rising demand. "We're looking to meliorate the efficiency and response time of the system," she said.
The government will also require background checks for people who try to buy restricted firearms through a legal entity, such as a corporation or trust. People were able to avert background checks in the by through these entities.
The Section of Health and Human Services will finalize a rule regarding health tape privacy laws to remove barriers to states providing mental health records to the background check arrangement.
The administration will enforce tighter rules for reporting guns that are lost or stolen on their way to the buyer to brand it easier for police enforcement to track down missing firearms.
Federal agencies volition encourage and fund more inquiry into technologies that can brand guns safer, largely to reduce the run a risk of accidents.

In addition to these measures, the assistants will go on pushing Congress to laissez passer tighter gun command laws, and to direct more funds to enforcing existing gun laws and to mental wellness treatment.

Federal background checks are rife with loopholes

Obama's executive actions are a minor but significant tweak to existing laws. In the US, there are several restrictions in federal constabulary to ownership a gun. Generally, the idea is that Americans who are underage, have serious criminal backgrounds, or are mentally ill should not be able to purchase a firearm.

Whether someone falls into whatever of these categories is typically evaluated through a background bank check: Nether the federal system, licensed dealers are required to run these checks before they tin sell someone a gun, typically by having the FBI check a person's criminal record, mental health history, and other factors. If someone fails a background check, he or she can't legally buy a gun.

Only the system is riddled with loopholes. The nearly well-known manner to bypass background checks is the private sales loophole: If someone purchases a gun from a private seller, such as a friend or family member, no gun background check is required. This is often mischaracterized as the "gun testify loophole," under the assumption that people can only go to a gun evidence and buy a gun without getting a background bank check. But licensed dealers at gun shows however accept to bear out a background check. The actual loophole is that someone can meet with a individual seller at a gun bear witness — or, increasingly, over the internet — and buy a firearm from that person without a background bank check. In other words, the gun show doesn't create a loophole; the private auction does.

An every bit large problem is that the system of groundwork checks is notoriously underfunded, understaffed, and underresourced. Although at that place are no waiting periods under federal police, a check that turns out inconclusive tin be extended for iii business organisation days. But these three days are a maximum for the government — and sometimes the three days lapse without the FBI completing its check, and a buyer can at that point purchase a gun without the completed cheque.

The FBI admitted that something like this happened with the shooter who killed ix people at a predominantly black church in Charleston, S Carolina, in June 2015: That shooter should have failed a background bank check for a handgun purchase after admitting to illegally possessing controlled substances in the past, but the FBI examiner did not obtain the shooter's record in time.

The federal background cheque system likewise largely relies on states' reports, including some data for mental health history and criminal records. Since states have their ain upkeep issues to deal with, or may simply ideologically oppose the idea of background checks, states' noncompliance tin can create still another manner the system can fail to finish someone who shouldn't buy a gun from obtaining one. (State laws care for guns in a wide variety of ways; Slate has a good rundown of the differences.)

Obama'south executive actions don't completely shut any of these loopholes and faults in existing law, including the "gun show loophole," but they do have steps to tighten current restrictions on firearms and ensure that federal officials tin can actually enforce the law that's on the books.

Following the mass shooting in Sandy Hook Unproblematic School in which a gunman killed 20 children, six adults, and himself, Congress was pressured to laissez passer a bill that would have tightened the private sales loophole and potentially taken other steps toward restricting access to guns. But negotiations over the pecker eventually brutal apart, leading Obama to act on his own.

Obama is dealing with a Congress that won't act on gun command

It tin be hard to sympathize how the US hasn't washed much to gainsay gun violence for years. America is unique not only in terms of gun violence simply in terms of gun ownership — the country has by far the highest rates of gun buying in the globe. The inquiry clearly shows that more guns hateful more gun violence, and then all those guns are leading to more deaths. And the public widely supports endmost the loopholes in the law. Nevertheless even with this research and public support, and despite thousands of mass shootings during Obama's time in office, Congress has decided non to human activity.

The reasons for this are complicated, but they're by and large rooted in America'due south stiff gun civilization and the powerful lobby backside that civilization.

The single nearly powerful political arrangement when it comes to guns is, undoubtedly, the National Burglarize Clan, which has an enormous stranglehold over conservative politics in America.

Anytime in that location's an attempt to impose new forms of gun command, the NRA rallies gun owners and other opponents of gun control to kill such proposals. These gun owners brand upward a minority of the population: anywhere from 34 to 43 pct of households, depending on which survey 1 uses. Only that population is a large and active plenty constituency, particularly within the Republican base, to make many legislators fearfulness that a poor grade from the NRA will cease their careers.

As a result, bourgeois media and politicians accept the NRA'south support — especially the coveted A-to-F ratings the organization gives out — very, very seriously. Sometimes politicians will go to absurd lengths to testify their support for gun rights. For example, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) terminal year starred in a video, from IJ Review, in which he cooked bacon with — this is not a joke — a motorcar gun.

Although several campaigns have popped up over the years to endeavor to counteract the NRA, none has come close to capturing the kind of influential hold that the organization has. Some of the groups — such every bit StopTheNRA.com, in part funded by Democratic donor Ken Lerer — didn't even last a few years.

Kristin Goss, author of The Gun Argue: What Everyone Needs to Know, said this might be irresolute. She argued that newer gun control groups similar Everytown for Gun Safety and Americans for Responsible Solutions are much more organized, are better funded, and have more grassroots support than gun command groups take had in her 20 years roofing this upshot. Every bit a effect, Democrats at the state and federal level seem much more willing to hash out gun command.

Just supporters of gun control face a huge obstacle: far more than passionate opponents. As Republican strategist Grover Norquist said in 2000, "The question is intensity versus preference. Yous tin ever go a sure pct to say they are in favor of some gun controls. But are they going to vote on their 'control' position?" Probably not, Norquist suggested, "but for that iv-v per centum who care about guns, they will vote on this."

What's backside that passion? Goss, who's also a political scientist at Duke Academy, suggested it'due south a sense of tangible loss — gun owners experience similar the government is going to accept their guns and rights. In comparison, gun control advocates are motivated by more abstract notions of reducing gun violence — although, Goss noted, the victims of mass shootings and their families accept begun to put a face on these policies by engaging more actively in advocacy work, which could make the gun control movement feel more relatable.

There is an exception at the state level, where legislatures have passed laws imposing (and relaxing) restrictions on guns. In 2014, for instance, Washington country and Oregon passed laws ensuring all guns take to go through background checks, including those sold between individuals. "There'southward a lot more going on than Congress," Goss said. "In blue states, gun laws are getting stricter. And in crimson states, in some cases, the gun laws are getting looser."

Nonetheless, the NRA's influence and its regular army of supporters button many of America'southward legislators, specially at the federal level and scarlet states, away from gun control measures — fifty-fifty though some countries that passed these policies have seen a lot of success with them. From Obama'south perspective, that forced him to act alone to get something washed on guns.

Universal background checks would help, but they likely wouldn't bring gun violence down to other developed countries' levels

America has far more gun homicides than other developed countries.

Although Obama's executive activeness will help slightly restrict admission to guns, it won't come anywhere close to bringing levels of gun violence downwards to the levels of other developed countries. Neither would the Senate beak that ultimately failed. The reason for that is unproblematic: The problem is, fundamentally, that the U.s. has a lot of guns, so any measure that doesn't significantly reduce the number of guns will ultimately fall short of fully addressing violence.

The inquiry on this is very clear. Reviews of the show by the Harvard School of Public Health's Injury Command Research Center take concluded that more guns lead to more gun violence. Other factors, such equally socioeconomic problems, obviously contribute to violence, merely guns are the one effect that makes America unique relative to other developed countries in comparable socioeconomic circumstances.

Have, for instance, this chart, from a 2007 written report by Harvard researchers, showing the correlation betwixt statewide firearm homicide victimization rates and household gun ownership after controlling for robbery rates:

A more than recent study from 2013, led by a Boston University School of Public Wellness researcher, reached like conclusions: After controlling for multiple variables, the study constitute that a ane pct increase in gun buying correlated with a roughly 0.ix percent ascent in the firearm homicide rate at the state level.

This holds upward around the earth. As Vox'due south Zack Beauchamp explained, a breakthrough assay in the 1990s by UC Berkeley's Franklin Zimring and Gordon Hawkins found that the US does not, contrary to the former conventional wisdom, have more crime in general than other Western industrial nations. Instead, the US appears to have more than lethal violence — and that's driven in large part by the prevalence of guns.

"A series of specific comparisons of the decease rates from property crime and assault in New York Metropolis and London prove how enormous differences in expiry risk can be explained even while full general patterns are similar," Zimring and Hawkins wrote. "A preference for crimes of personal force and the willingness and ability to use guns in robbery make similar levels of property crime 54 times as deadly in New York Metropolis as in London."

How tin can the land address this? The enquiry shows tightening existing gun control measures in the Us would help. But as Harvard's David Hemenway told Vocalism'due south Dylan Matthews, it would probable take decades for the mild gun control measures proposed in the US to accept a significant impact. "Information technology's all speculation," Hemenway said. "I suspect it would have a while (decades) for the Usa to become downward to gun violence levels of other developed countries because a) nosotros have and so many guns which are durable, and b) we accept a gun culture — we tend to use guns more oftentimes in more situations than citizens of other developed countries."

To accept a more firsthand impact, then, the United states of america would have to discover a way to rapidly remove the number of guns in apportionment. Other countries have actually washed that: In Australia, after a 1996 mass shooting, lawmakers passed new restrictions on guns and imposed a mandatory buyback program that substantially confiscated people'southward guns, seizing at least 650,000 firearms.

According to 1 review of the evidence by Harvard researchers, Commonwealth of australia'southward firearm homicide charge per unit dropped by nigh 42 percent in the seven years afterward the law passed, and its firearm suicide charge per unit fell by 57 per centum. Although it'due south difficult to judge how much of this was driven by the buyback program, researchers contend it probable played some part: "First, the drop in firearm deaths was largest among the type of firearms nearly affected by the buyback. Second, firearm deaths in states with higher buyback rates per capita roughshod proportionately more than in states with lower buyback rates."

Notwithstanding, like measures would be very difficult to laissez passer in America, due to the strength of gun culture and the gun foyer in the US — pushing Obama to human action without Congress with a much smaller policy tweak.