Attorney General Loretta Lynch listens as President Barack Obama speaks in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Monday, Jan. 4, 2016, during a meeting with law enforcement officials to discuss executive actions the president can take to curb gun violence. The president is slated to finalize a set of new executive actions tightening U.S. gun laws, kicking off his last year in office with a clear signal that he intends to prioritize one of the country's most intractable issues. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
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Watch CNN’s “Guns in America” townhall with President Obama at 8 p.m. ET Thursday
(CNN) —
Frustrated by Congress, President Barack Obama is once again turning to the tool of executive action to achieve change, this time in the area of gun control.
Obama said Tuesday he is seeking to expand background checks for buyers. The measure clarifies that individuals “in the business of selling firearms” register as licensed gun dealers, effectively narrowing the so-called “gun show loophole,” which exempts most small sellers from keeping formal sales records.
A main thrust of the President’s new actions, top White House adviser Valerie Jarrett said Monday, is to clarify who is required to conduct mandatory background checks.
Obama has had to navigate a narrow path between gun control advocates who have been urging him to act broadly and critics who accuse him of using executive actions to impermissibly bypass Congress.
Federal law defines a dealer as “any person engaged in the business of selling firearms at wholesale or retail,” but gun control advocates have long criticized a so-called “gun show loophole” that does not necessarily cover gun sales that are not performed by a federally licensed firearm dealer. Such sales could include those performed at gun shows in most states or over the Internet.
President Barack Obama condemned the slayings of three Louisiana law enforcement officers on Sunday, July 17, as he called on the nation to condemn violence against law enforcement. "We as a nation have to be loud and clear that nothing justifies violence against law enforcement," Obama said, speaking from the White House press briefing room. "Attacks on police are an attack on all of us and the rule of law that makes society possible."
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Photos: Obama leads country through grief
U.S. President Barack Obama speaks during an interfaith memorial service for the victims of the Dallas police shooting on Tuesday, July 12. Obama sought to unify the country during the somber memorial in Dallas for the five police officers slain in a sniper ambush during what had been a peaceful protest. The incident occurred amid a tragic week for the nation that saw Alton Sterling in Louisiana and Philando Castile in Minnesota killed during encounters with police.
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Photos: Obama leads country through grief
President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden place flowers at a memorial on Thursday, June 16, for the victims of the nightclub shooting in Orlando. At least 49 people were killed in the massacre, the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.
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Photos: Obama leads country through grief
Obama pauses on October 1 during a news conference about the mass shooting at Umpqua Community College in Oregon.
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Photos: Obama leads country through grief
Obama sings "Amazing Grace" during a service in June 2015 honoring the life of the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, a South Carolina lawmaker. Pinckney was one of nine people killed in a shooting at a church in Charleston, South Carolina.
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Photos: Obama leads country through grief
Obama and first lady Michelle Obama arrive for a memorial service in Fort Hood, Texas, in April 2014. Officials say Army Spc. Ivan Lopez took a .45-caliber handgun onto the military post, killing three people and injuring 16 before taking his own life.
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Photos: Obama leads country through grief
Obama pauses as he speaks in September 2013 about the shooting at the Washington Navy Yard, mourning what he called "yet another mass shooting" that took the life of American patriots.
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Photos: Obama leads country through grief
Obama tours a tornado-affected area in Moore, Oklahoma, in May 2013. A tornado that ripped through Moore hit 2,400 homes on a 17-mile path.
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Photos: Obama leads country through grief
Obama speaks at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross following the Boston Marathon bombings that killed three people and injured at least 264 in April 2013. Suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed during an encounter with police, and his brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, was sentenced to death.
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Photos: Obama leads country through grief
Obama attends a memorial service at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, in April 2013. Fourteen people, nearly all first responders, died in an explosion at the West Fertilizer Co.
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Photos: Obama leads country through grief
In December 2012, 20-year-old Adam Lanza walked into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, and killed 20 children and six adults. At the memorial service, Obama said, "In the coming weeks, I will use whatever power this office holds to engage my fellow citizens -- from law enforcement to mental health professionals to parents and educators -- in an effort aimed at preventing more tragedies like this."
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Photos: Obama leads country through grief
Obama walks back to the Oval Office of the White House in July 2012. Obama cut short a campaign stop in Florida in the aftermath of the mass shooting at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado. Twelve moviegoers were killed and 70 were injured by convicted shooter James E. Holmes.
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Photos: Obama leads country through grief
Obama speaks on the campus of Missouri Southern State University after a tornado ripped through Joplin, Missouri, in May 2011, killing 158 people.
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Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Photos: Obama leads country through grief
The President and first lady hold hands during a memorial service for the victims of a Tucson, Arizona, shooting. On January 8, 2011, Jared Lee Loughner shot six people and wounded 13 more, including then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.
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Photos: Obama leads country through grief
An explosion at the Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia killed 29 workers in April 2010. It was the worst U.S. mine disaster in 40 years. "All the hard work; all the hardship; all the time spent underground; it was all for their families. ... It was all in the hopes of something better," Obama said about the fallen workers.
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Photos: Obama leads country through grief
Thirteen people were shot and killed by Maj. Nidal Hasan at Fort Hood in November 2009. Speaking to an estimated 15,000 people at a memorial service, Obama called the act "incomprehensible" and vowed that justice would be done.
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JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images
When the White House revealed details of the planned unilateral action Monday night, Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, praised the actions. The expansion of Brady background checks were the “centerpiece” of the President’s actions, he said, adding that they will result in the expansion of background checks to the “thousands of commercial gun sales that happen.”
John Malcolm, of the conservative Heritage Foundation, said that most of the actions “are not controversial or problematic from a legal stand point.”
Regarding the background checks, he said “the devil is in the details and it remains to be seen what exactly the guidance put forward by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives will be.”
Other actions will include requiring background checks for people trying to buy some of the most dangerous weapons through trusts and corporations, improving the efficiency of the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) and dedicating new resources to increase access to mental health treatment.
“Asking for additional resources from Congress is not controversial, asking U.S. Attorneys to focus their prosecutorial resources on going after the worst of the worst is not controversial. Asking the FBI to try to improve the background check data system (NICS) is not only non controversial it will be a very welcome thing,” Malcolm said.
But conservative activist Larry Klayman said Monday night that he planned to file legal action in short order. Other challenges are expected to come.
Executive actions are a broad category of power that can include everything from executive orders to recess appointments.
“Potential legal challenges will depend upon how the new regulations are actually worded, but based on what we have heard so far, challengers to the new rules will face an uphill battle because it sounds like the primary thing the President is doing is interpreting an ambiguous federal statute,” said Steve Vladeck a professor of law at Washington College of Law at American University and a CNN legal analyst.
“The President is allowed to adopt reasonable interpretations of ambiguous federal statutes,” he said.
Adam Winkler, a constitutional law professor at UCLA School of Law and the author of “Gunfight: The Battle over the Right to Bear Arms in America,” says that the President’s actions look like a “a laundry list of relatively minor reforms that could, together, make a small dent in America’s gun violence epidemic. “
Winkler says that while none of the individual reforms “are themselves controversial” the entire package of reforms is “certain to raise the hackles” of the National Rifle Association.
“Anything that makes it even marginally harder for someone to sell or buy guns, even without background checks, is opposed by the NRA,” he said.
The NRA dismissed the President’s move on Tuesday and pledged to fight for gun owner rights, but did not immediately outline a planned legal challenge.
“The proposed executive actions are ripe for abuse by the Obama administration, which has made no secret of its contempt for the Second Amendment,” said Chris Cox, executive director of NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action, in a statement. “The NRA will continue to fight to protect the fundamental, individual right to keep and bear arms as guaranteed under our Constitution. We will not allow law-abiding gun owners to become scapegoats for President Obama’s failed policies.”
