White House to Push Gun Control............?

White House to Push Gun Control

http://www.newsweek.com/2011/01/27/w...n-control.html

Obama intentionally did not mention gun control in his State of the Union, but aides say that in the next two weeks the administration will unveil a campaign to get Congress to toughen existing laws.

At the beginning of his State of the Union address, President Obama tipped his hat to Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who’s now recuperating in a Houston medical facility. But throughout the hourlong speech, he never addressed the issue at the core of the Giffords tragedy—gun control—and what lawmakers would, or should, do to reform American firearm-access laws.

That was intentional, according to the White House. An administration official says Obama didn’t mention guns in his speech because of the omnipresent controversy surrounding the Second Amendment and gun control. Tuesday’s speech was designed to be more about the economy and how, as Obama repeated nine times, the U.S. could “win the future.”

But in the next two weeks, the White House will unveil a new gun-control effort in which it will urge Congress to strengthen current laws, which now allow some mentally unstable people, such as alleged Arizona shooter Jared Loughner, to obtain certain assault weapons, in some cases without even a background check.

Tuesday night after the speech, Obama adviser David Plouffe said to NBC News that the president would not let the moment after the Arizona shootings pass without pushing for some change in the law, to prevent another similar incident. “It’s a very important issue, and one I know there’s going to be debate about on the Hill.”

The White House said that to avoid being accused of capitalizing on the Arizona shootings for political gain, Obama will address the gun issue in a separate speech, likely early next month. He’s also expected to use Arizona as a starting point, but make the case that America’s gun laws have been too loose for much longer than just the past few weeks.

As the White House prepares its strategy, several gun-policy groups are saying they were burned by the lack of any mention of guns in the president’s highest-profile speech of the year. “President Obama tonight failed to challenge old assumptions on the need for, and political possibilities of, reducing the gun violence—which he suggested should be done two weeks ago in Tucson,” said Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, the nation’s largest gun-safety group. No group said it had been consulted by the White House regarding legislative suggestions.

Meanwhile, the National Rifle Association has stayed largely silent following the Arizona shootings. Asked about a specialized White House effort on guns, a spokesman for the powerful gun lobby declined to comment.

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Obama To Push Gun Control Soon

Friday, January 28, 2011

To the dismay of the Brady Campaign and other gun ban groups, President Barack Obama didn’t address gun control during his State of the Union address on January 25th. However, Newsweek reports that “in the next two weeks, the White House will unveil a new gun-control effort,” and that the White House confirms, “Obama will address the gun issue in a separate speech, likely early next month.” According to Newsweek, Obama believes that gun laws have been “too loose for much longer than just the past few weeks” following the murders in Tucson, Arizona.

Precisely what President Obama might have in mind is uncertain. His post-election transition website advocated reimposing the expired federal “assault weapon” ban, but that ban would clearly be irrelevant in the wake of a shooting that involved a firearm not covered by the old ban.

The President, a long-time gun control supporter, has been conspicuously silent on gun control restrictions since taking office. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the anti-gun groups prodding him to support their agendas. Mayors Against Illegal Guns, which sent the President a long list of gun control recommendations in August of 2009, is proposing that all private sales of firearms be subject to checks through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS)—which would have been irrelevant in Tucson, since the accused killer acquired his guns from a dealer. MAIG is also calling for “fixing” NICS. Among the many “fixes” the group has in mind is that “people who have been suspended or expelled from a federally funded college or university because of mental illness” and “people who are compelled by a court to take medication for mental illness or to get other mental health care” would be prohibited from possessing firearms. MAIG also proposes to extend the prohibition to anyone who has had a drug-related arrest, a failed drug test, an admission of drug use, or a drug-related conviction within the previous five years.

Concurrently, the Brady Campaign is throwing its support behind H.R. 308—the “more than 10 round” magazine ban introduced by Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.)—and asks the group’s supporters to sign a petition urging “a few basic steps,” with neither the “steps” nor the intended recipient of the petition disclosed (to read a detailed fact sheet on H.R. 308, please click here).

The Violence Policy Center, which guided McCarthy in crafting her magazine ban bill, is supporting it with yet another of its countless “analyses”-- Accessories to Murder: High-Capacity Magazines—and a similar effort directed against the type of pistol used in Tucson. The VPC uses the opportunity to suggest, as it often does, that gun ownership is fading, by referring to standard magazines for self-defense handguns as a marketing tool the firearm industry uses to appeal to “its shrinking customer base.” That's an interesting argument to hear from a group that has no members, while the number of guns possessed by Americans increases year after year.

The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence—VPC leader Josh Sugarmann’s employer back when the group was known as the National Coalition to Ban Handguns—advocates not merely running NICS checks on gun buyers, but “investigating” them as well. The group also insists that the Tucson shooting was the result of “insurrectionist rhetoric” the group blames on conservatives, various politicians, and the five justices who joined the Supreme Court’s Heller decision—rather than being the act of one deranged individual, as all available evidence suggests.

And, in a return to his modus operandi of vilifying gun shows and the purchase of firearms by show attendees, this week anti-gun Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), introduced legislation to “establish background check procedures for gun shows.” As usual, this bill is not about gun shows. Rather, S. 35 is the latest rendition in a long line of Lautenberg-introduced bills that are nothing more than “solutions” in search of a problem. Numerous government studies have determined that gun shows are an insignificant source of firearms misused in crime.

Which, if any, of these proposals and theories will get the president’s endorsement remains to be seen. But gun owners should be prepared: The second two years of President Obama’s term may be tougher than the first.






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