by TGM Staff
Striving to pursue the president’s gun control agenda without congressional action, the White House announced new gun restrictions on Aug. 29, curbing the importation of military surplus firearms and proposing to close a little-known “loophole” that lets felons and other prohibited persons circumvent background checks by registering guns to corporations, the Associated Press reported.
Already, gun rights activists have launched a petition to the White House calling for a reversal of the executive action. Gun rights organizations are furious.
The move comes four months after a gun control drive collapsed spectacularly in the Senate, President Barack Obama added two more executive actions to a list of 23 steps the White House determined Obama could take on his own whether or not they would reduce gun-related violence. With the political world focused on Mideast tensions and looming fiscal battles, the move signaled Obama’s intent to show he hasn’t lost sight of the cause he pursued so vigorously after the Newtown, CT, elementary school massacre last December.
Vice President Joe Biden, Obama’s point-man on gun control this year unveiled the new actions at the White House.
“It’s simple, it’s straightforward, it’s common sense,” Biden said in making the administration’s announcement in the Roosevelt Room of the White House.
But that’s not how firearms rights organizations see it.
“The Obama administration has once again completely missed the mark when it comes to stopping violent crime,” said National Rifle Association spokesman Andrew Arulanandam. “This administration should get serious about prosecuting violent criminals who misuse guns and stop focusing its efforts on law-abiding gun owners.”
Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, called it “an outrage.”
“If there were any doubt about the level of anti-gun extremism in the Obama administration, this announcement just put those doubts to rest,” Gottlieb said.
Biden was joined by Attorney General Eric Holder when he formally unveiled the new measures during the swearing in of B. Todd Jones, whose confirmation to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives after six years of political wrangling to fill that position was another of Obama’s post-Newtown priorities.
One new policy will end an earlier government policy that has allowed obsolete military weapons, sold or donated by the US to allies, to be re-imported into the US by private entities. The White House said the US has approved 250,000 of those guns to be re-imported since 2005, although the Obama administration has blocked planned sales of surplus M1 Garands and M1 carbines from South Korea since Obama took office. Under the announced new policy, only museums and a few other entities like the government will be eligible to re-import military-grade firearms, no matter how antique.
The CCRKBA said this policy change “specifically targets collectors and competitors by blocking returns of surplus military rifles over six decades old, and reveals his extremist anti-gun attitude.”
According to the AP report, the National Rifle Association dismissed the administration’’ moves as misdirected, arguing that background checks for corporations and a ban on re-importing outdated guns wouldn’t keep criminals from getting weapons.
The Obama administration is also proposing a federal rule to prevent any individual who would be ineligible to pass a background check from skirting the law by registering certain guns, like machineguns and short-barreled shotguns regulated by the 1934 National Firearms Act, to a corporation or trust. The new rule would require people associated with those entities, like beneficiaries and trustees, to undergo the same type of fingerprint-based background checks as individuals if they want to register those types of guns.
The new rules for guns registered to corporations will follow the traditional regulatory process, with a 90-day comment period before ATF reviews suggestions and finalizes the rule.
Renewing his pledge to keep working for a legislative fix, Biden suggested that one opportunity for improving prospects for gun control may come next year in the midterm elections. Liberal groups, like NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns, and other powerful interests supporting gun control have vowed to target in 2014 those lawmakers who voted against gun control.
“If Congress won’t act, we’ll fight for a new Congress,” Biden said. “It’s that simple. But we’re going to get this done.”
By serving as point man on this new administration gun control strategy, some suggest that Biden is putting himself at risk of political backlash.
“Joe Biden is likely to have real trouble pandering himself as a reasonable gun owner when he decides to run for president in 2016,” CCRKBA’s Gottlieb suggested, “because gun owners will not forget his involvement in this prohibition.”
