Obama to unveil gun violence measures Wednesday

Jan 16, 8:15 AM EST — WASHINGTON (AP) — Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s broad effort to reduce gun vio­lence will include pro­posed bans on military-style assault weapons and high-capacity ammu­ni­tion mag­a­zines as well as more than a dozen exec­u­tive orders aimed at cir­cum­vent­ing con­gres­sional oppo­si­tion to stricter gun control.

Obama was to announce the mea­sures Wednes­day at a White House event that will bring together law enforce­ment offi­cials, law­mak­ers and chil­dren who wrote the pres­i­dent about gun vio­lence fol­low­ing last month’s shoot­ing of 20 young stu­dents and six adults at an ele­men­tary school in New­town, Conn.

The pres­i­dent also invited fam­i­lies of the New­town vic­tims and sur­vivors of the hor­rific shoot­ing to the White House Wednesday.

The broad pack­age Obama will unveil will also include efforts to stop bul­ly­ing and boost avail­abil­ity of men­tal health services.

But Con­gress would have to approve the bans on assault weapons and ammu­ni­tion mag­a­zines hold­ing more than 10 bul­lets, along with a require­ment for uni­ver­sal back­ground checks on gun buy­ers. Some gun con­trol advo­cates worry that oppo­si­tion from Repub­li­cans and con­ser­v­a­tive Democ­rats, as well as the National Rifle Asso­ci­a­tion, will be too great to overcome.

“We’re not going to get an out­right ban,” Rep. Car­olyn McCarthy, D-N.Y., said of lim­its on assault weapons. Still, McCarthy, a lead­ing voice in Con­gress in favor of gun con­trol, said she would keep push­ing for a ban and hoped Obama would as well.

White House offi­cials, seek­ing to avoid set­ting up the pres­i­dent for fail­ure, have empha­sized that no sin­gle mea­sure — even an assault weapons ban — would solve a scourge of gun vio­lence across the coun­try. But with­out such a ban or other sweep­ing, congressionally-approved mea­sures, it’s unclear whether exec­u­tive actions alone could make any notice­able difference.

“It is a sim­ple fact that there are lim­its to what can be done within exist­ing law,” White House spokesman Jay Car­ney said Tues­day. “Con­gress has to act on the kinds of mea­sures we’ve already men­tioned because the power to do that is reserved by Congress.”

Nearly six in 10 Amer­i­cans want stricter gun laws in the after­math of the shoot­ings in Con­necti­cut, with majori­ties favor­ing a nation­wide ban on military-style, rapid-fire weapons and lim­its on gun vio­lence depicted in video games, movies and TV shows, accord­ing to a new Asso­ci­ated Press-GfK poll.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Tues­day signed into law the tough­est gun con­trol law in the nation, and the first since the Con­necti­cut school shoot­ings. The law includes a tougher assault-weapons ban and pro­vi­sions to try to keep guns out of the hands of men­tally ill peo­ple who make threats.

Accord­ing to a lob­by­ist briefed Tues­day, Obama will present a three-part plan focused on gun vio­lence, edu­ca­tion and men­tal health. He’ll call for:

- A focus on uni­ver­sal back­ground checks. Right now some 40 per­cent of gun sales take place with­out back­ground checks, includ­ing by pri­vate sell­ers at gun shows or over the Inter­net, accord­ing to the Brady Cam­paign to Pre­vent Gun Violence.

- A ban on assault weapons and lim­it­ing ammu­ni­tion mag­a­zines to 10 rounds or fewer.

- A fed­eral statute to stop “straw man” pur­chases of guns and crack down on traf­fick­ing rings.

- More anti-bullying efforts; more train­ing for teach­ers, coun­selors and prin­ci­pals; and fund­ing for schools for more coun­selors and resource officers.

Obama also will order fed­eral agen­cies to con­duct more research on gun use and crimes, the lob­by­ist said, some­thing Repub­li­can con­gres­sional majori­ties have lim­ited through lan­guage in bud­get bills.

On men­tal health, Obama will focus on more avail­abil­ity of men­tal health ser­vices, train­ing more school coun­selors and men­tal health pro­fes­sion­als, and men­tal health first aid train­ing for first respon­ders, accord­ing to the lob­by­ist, who was not autho­rized to dis­cuss the plan pub­licly before the president’s announce­ment and requested anonymity.

The president’s frame­work is based on rec­om­men­da­tions from Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden, who led a wide-ranging task force on gun vio­lence. The vice president’s pro­pos­als included 19 steps that could be achieved through exec­u­tive action.

Obama also may order the Jus­tice Depart­ment to crack down on peo­ple who lie on gun-sale back­ground checks; only a tiny num­ber are now pros­e­cuted. Such a step has sup­port from the NRA, which has con­sis­tently argued that exist­ing laws must be enforced before new ones are considered.

And Obama may give schools flex­i­bil­ity to use grant money to improve safety. But he is not expected to call for armed guards in schools, a posi­tion pro­moted by the NRA.

The gun lobby released an online video Tues­day that called Obama an “elit­ist hyp­ocrite” for hav­ing armed Secret Ser­vice agents pro­tect his daugh­ters at school while not com­mit­ting to installing armed guards in all schools.

Gun con­trol pro­po­nent Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., who met with Biden on Mon­day, said the pres­i­dent is also likely to take exec­u­tive action to ensure bet­ter state report­ing of men­tal health and other records that go into the fed­eral back­ground check data­base. But he, too, acknowl­edged there were clear lim­its to what Obama can do with­out Con­gress’ say-so.

“You can’t change the law through exec­u­tive order,” Scott said.

White House offi­cials sig­naled that Obama would seek to rally pub­lic sup­port for the mea­sures he puts for­ward, per­haps hold­ing events around the coun­try or rely­ing on Orga­niz­ing for Amer­ica, his still-operational pres­i­den­tial campaign.

Dur­ing his announce­ment Wednes­day, Obama will be joined chil­dren from across the U.S. who wrote let­ters to him about gun vio­lence and school safety.

One of those chil­dren, a Mary­land 8-year-old named Grant, wrote: “It’s a free coun­try but I rec­om­mend there needs (to) be a limit with guns. Please don’t let peo­ple own machine guns or other pow­er­ful guns like that.”

It’s unclear how much polit­i­cal cap­i­tal Obama will exert in press­ing for con­gres­sional action.

The White House and Con­gress will soon be con­sumed by three loom­ing fis­cal dead­lines. And the pres­i­dent has also pledged to tackle com­pre­hen­sive immi­gra­tion reform early this year, another effort that will require Repub­li­cans’ sup­port and one in which Obama may be more likely to get their backing.

Sen­ate Repub­li­can leader Mitch McConnell of Ken­tucky has warned the White House that it will be at least three months before the Sen­ate con­sid­ers gun leg­is­la­tion. And Sen­ate Major­ity Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has said immi­gra­tion, not gun con­trol, is at the top of his pri­or­ity list after the fis­cal fights.

House Repub­li­can lead­ers are expected to wait for any action by the Sen­ate before decid­ing how — or whether — to pro­ceed with any gun measure.

Posted by Randa Wagner on Jan 16 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.