U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch (L) looks toward U.S. President Barack Obama during a meeting with other top law enforcement officials to discuss what executive actions he can take to curb gun violence, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington January 4, 2016.
Kevin Lamarque / Reuters
President Obama plans to move forward Tuesday with a series of executive actions meant to expand background checks on firearm sales, including online and at gun shows.
The actions meant to bypass a gridlocked Congress are the most aggressive executive measures Obama has taken since the 2013 school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, and come one week after he announced a task force that included U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch to come up with a plan aimed at curbing gun violence.
On a conference call Monday night, Lynch said Obama’s actions will focus heavily on overhauling the national firearms background check system in order to keep guns out of the wrong hands.
The measures will also require more government workers to focus on policing gun sales. Through the executive actions, the White House hopes to add 200 new Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) agents and more than 230 FBI agents to ensure anyone selling guns for profit is conducting background checks on all purchasers.
“We will be looking for those individuals who seek to avoid registering,” Lynch said.
The background check exception for hobbyists and collectors who trade guns will remain, but Lynch noted that anyone who “hides behind the exceptions” will be targeted.
The second piece of the Obama administration’s efforts to improve the background check system will be to build a new online system that it can opreate 24/7.
The current system, Lynch said, is “working with the best of 1990s technology."
Lynch added that federal officials will be ramping up online monitoring of gun transactions because so many are now happening on the "dark web," which makes it impossible to predict right how many additional firearms dealers are currently exist.
But as in prior attempts to move past Congress with executive actions, Obama is expected to face some push back, particularly from those in Republican party who feel the president is overstepping.
House Speaker Paul Ryan on Monday accused the president of “at minimum subverting the legislative branch, and potentially overturning its will.”
"Ever since he was a candidate, President Obama’s dismissiveness toward Americans who value the Second Amendment has been well-documented," Ryan said in a statement. "He acts as if the right to bear arms is something to be tolerated, when in truth – as the Supreme Court reaffirmed in 2008 – it is fundamental. The same goes for the Constitution and its limits on executive power.”
Asked if whether Congress could block some of Obama's measures by controlling the funding that would need to be freed up to hire the additional agents, Lynch said the administration was confident in its ability to move them through.
"We’re very comfortable that the president can take these actions now," she said.
from BuzzFeed - USNews http://ift.tt/1UrzREA
No comments:
Post a Comment