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USA Gun Control Timeline, a social experiment...Post Sandy Hook to Present
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milehighmike |
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By hook, by crook or by executive fiat, Of course he is, the constitution be damned, FULL SPEED AHEAD!"Obama taking action on gun background check system" [link to news.yahoo.com] WASHINGTON (AP) — Blocked by Congress from expanding gun sale background checks, President Barack Obama is turning to actions within his own power to keep people from buying a gun who are prohibited for mental health reasons.
Federal law bans certain mentally ill people from purchasing firearms, but not all states are providing data to stop the prohibited sales to the FBI's background check system. A federal review last year found 17 states contributed fewer than 10 mental health records to the database, meaning many deemed by a judge to be a danger still could have access to guns.
The Obama administration was starting a process Friday aimed at removing barriers in health privacy laws that prevent some states from reporting information to the background check system. The action comes two days after the Senate rejected a measure that would have required buyers of firearms online and at gun shows to pass a background check. That's already required for shoppers at licensed gun dealers.
Stung by the defeat, Obama vowed to keep up the fight for the background check expansion but also to do what he could through executive action.
"Even without Congress, my administration will keep doing everything it can to protect more of our communities," Obama said from the Rose Garden shortly after the Senate voted. "We're going to address the barriers that prevent states from participating in the existing background check system."
Obama also mentioned giving law enforcement more information about lost and stolen guns and establishing emergency plans for schools. Those measures were among the 23 executive actions the president signed in January when he announced his broader push for tighter gun laws in response to a mass shooting of first-graders and staff at Newtown, Conn.'s Sandy Hook Elementary School...."
"Behind the Curtain: Obama, boxed in" [link to www.politico.com] "There are two very different President Obamas.
There’s the confident, uncompromising Obama who sought to shame and bully Republicans into submitting to his agenda of tax increases and sweeping gun reform. This version of Obama was dominant until one month ago.
Then there’s the calmer, more compromising Obama — the one who has courted Republicans and taken on his own party with a call for (modest) reductions in entitlement spending. This version of Obama took command last month.
Both are flailing.
Obama, regardless of the personality and political approach he displays on any given day, keeps running into the same wall of insurmountable opposition. The cold, hard reality is that the president is trapped in a very frustrating box: He realizes that the vast majority of Congress is as impervious to his pressure as it is his charm. He is damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t — and he knows it, several of his friends tell us.
He will most likely get nothing on guns despite his vow after Wednesday’s Senate defeat that “this effort is not over.” He will most likely get nothing more on a grand bargain to lift the economy. He stands a decent chance of getting an immigration deal. But as one influential Democratic adviser told us, that’s only because the president has largely stayed on the sidelines. “POTUS really doesn’t have any sway with red-state Dems,” said a top Democratic official close to the White House. Democratic senators, the official added, “won in states that POTUS lost — some by huge margins. Also, even in blue states, many Democrats ran ahead of POTUS.”
Obama has privately resigned himself to this bleak reality — in fact, he anticipated it more than a year ago. In private conversations during the campaign, Obama made plain that the job of being president was a drag under divided government — and that he had deep reservations about grinding out another two or four years of minimal progress through a gridlocked Congress. Now, the combination of Republican resistance and the high number of Senate Democrats running in red states in 2014 virtually assures little change for at least 18 months.
David Axelrod, sounding shell-shocked by the decisiveness of the Senate defeat on gun reform, said Obama is indeed frustrated by the constraints that bind him and knows that’s what he signed up for. “On this one, he tried everything,” Axelrod said. “It’s easy after a stinging defeat like this to say: ‘There’s no formula.’ But what you can’t do is take your bat and ball and go home....”
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