Obama’s new gun-control push will bypass Congress

Unable to get anything past Congress, President Barack Obama’s push for gun control will feature a yearlong campaign urging states and localities to do what they can to curb gun violence.

He is expected to prod governors, state legislatures, mayors, city councils and police chiefs to implement policies and laws in an effort to decrease the number of mass shootings and acts of random violence that occur every day in America, according to activists familiar with the administration’s plan.

The pressure on states and cities will come along with executive orders that Obama will issue on his own – all recognitions that any proposed changes in law would be dead on arrival in Congress.

The president used a similar tactic after he failed to convince Congress to raise the federal minimum wage. He called for congressional action in his 2013 State of the Union address, but by 2014, after bills never left committees on Capitol Hill, he turned his attention to state and local officials.

Tim Daly, director for campaigns, guns and crime at the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning research center that has worked closely with the White House on this issue, said Obama would use his “last year of the bully pulpit” to urge others to act.

The Center for American Progress issued a report last month outlining 28 ways that governors, attorneys general and other state executives could fight gun violence in their states without turning to their legislatures.

However, Obama's push to rally municipalities around gun control might meet hurdles in states where laws prevent cities and counties from regulating firearms and ammunition.

Most states have laws prohibiting local jurisdictions from passing gun control regulations that would be more restrictive than state law, according to the National Rifle Association and the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence – two key advocacy groups that generally are on opposite sides of the debate over gun control.

The Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence said Connecticut, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York had no laws on the books preventing lawmakers from taking up the issue of gun control legislation at the local level.

Obama is expected to announced a new series of executive actions Tuesday at the White House. He will broaden his push for local actions first in a prime-time town hall meeting on gun violence Thursday night on CNN, then in his final State of the Union address Tuesday, Jan. 12, and in campaign trips around the country.

On his own unilateral actions, reports suggested Obama was looking at expanding the number of background checks on gun purchases by requiring more sellers to register as federally licensed gun dealers.

Advocates of gun control said they expected the president to clarify which individuals were considered to be “engaged in the business” of dealing in firearms and were required to become licensed dealers, conducting background checks for all gun sales. Other measures might bar more people accused of domestic abuse from legally obtaining firearms.

“For us to get our complete arms around the problem, Congress needs to act,” Obama said after meeting at the White House with Attorney General Loretta Lynch to discuss the plan.

Lacking that, he added, “what I asked my team to do is to see what more we could do to strengthen our enforcement and prevent guns from falling into the wrong hands, to make sure that criminals, people who are mentally unstable and those who could pose a danger to themselves or others are less likely to get a gun.”

He briefed members of the House Gun Violence Prevention Task Force on the issue late Monday after meeting with Lynch, FBI Director James Comey and the deputy director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, who were helping to develop recommendations.

“The Republican leadership in Congress has done nothing as gun violence has seemingly become America’s new normal,” said Rep. Mike Thompson, D-Calif., the task force’s chairman. “The president and Democrats refuse to stand silently by.”

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said the administration had consulted with White House and Department of Justice attorneys to make sure it was on solid legal footing.

“There are common-sense steps that he can take, using his authority, that do not undermine the constitutional rights of law-abiding Americans. But we have to do something in this country to address the consequences of Congress’ failure to act,” he said.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said Monday that the president’s actions actions were a “dangerous level of executive overreach.” Several of his party’s presidential candidates have pledged to undo them if they are elected.

Front-runner Donald Trump told CNN that “pretty soon you won’t be able to get guns.” He accused Obama of resorting to executive orders because he was too lazy to work with Congress.

“You’re supposed to cajole, get people in a room. You’re supposed to deal with them. You have Republicans, you have Democrats, you have all these people, they get elected to do this stuff and you’re supposed to get together and pass a law,” Trump said. “He doesn’t want to do that because it’s too much work. So he doesn’t want to work too hard. He wants to go back and play golf.”

In 2013, after the mass school shooting in Newtown, Conn., Obama proposed the nation’s most aggressive gun-control plan in generations, which included banning assault weapons, limiting ammunition magazines to 10 rounds, requiring background checks on all gun purchases, penalizing those who buy guns from unlicensed dealers, hiring 1,000 more school resource officers and spending millions more on training, research and counseling. His requests of Congress were defeated, though he did issue some executive actions.

Lesley Clark, Anna Douglas and Michael Doyle contributed to this article.

This story was originally published January 4, 2016 at 5:16 PM with the headline "Obama’s new gun-control push will bypass Congress."