{"id":30071,"date":"2016-01-06T09:04:40","date_gmt":"2016-01-06T17:04:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/we-need-to-feel-the-fierce-urgency-of-now\/"},"modified":"2016-01-06T09:04:40","modified_gmt":"2016-01-06T17:04:40","slug":"we-need-to-feel-the-fierce-urgency-of-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/we-need-to-feel-the-fierce-urgency-of-now\/","title":{"rendered":"‘We need to feel the fierce urgency of now’"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON<\/strong> \u2014 President Barack Obama, at one point wiping tears from his cheek, unveiled his plan Tuesday to tighten control and enforcement of firearms in the U.S., using his presidential powers in the absence of legal changes he implored Congress to pass.<\/p>\n

Obama accused the gun lobby of taking Congress hostage, but said \u201cthey cannot hold America hostage.\u201d He insisted it was possible to uphold the Second Amendment while doing something to tackle the frequency of mass shootings in the U.S. that he said had become \u201cthe new normal.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not a plot to take away everybody\u2019s guns,\u201d Obama said in a ceremony in the East Room. \u201cYou pass a background check, you purchase a firearm. The problem is some gun sellers have been operating under a different set of rules.\u201d<\/p>\n

Obama wiped tears away as he recalled the 20 first-graders killed in 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School. He paid tribute to the parents, some of whom gathered for the ceremony, who he said had never imagined their child\u2019s life would be cut short by a bullet.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery time I think about those kids, it gets me mad,\u201d Obama said.<\/p>\n

At the centerpiece of Obama\u2019s plan is a more sweeping definition of gun dealers that the administration hopes will expand the number of sales subject to background checks. Under current law, only federally licensed gun dealers must conduct background checks on buyers. But at gun shows, websites and flea markets, sellers often skirt that requirement by declining to register as licensed dealers.<\/p>\n

Aiming to narrow that loophole, the Justice Department\u2019s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is issuing updated guidance that says the government should deem anyone \u201cin the business\u201d of selling guns to be a dealer, regardless of where he or she sells the guns. To that end, the government will consider other factors, including how many guns a person sells, how frequently, and whether those guns are sold for a profit.<\/p>\n

The White House also put gun sellers on notice that the administration planned to strengthen enforcement \u2014 including deploying 230 new examiners the FBI will hire to process background checks.<\/p>\n

The impact of Obama\u2019s plan on gun violence remains a major question, and one not easily answered. Had the rules been in place in the past, the steps wouldn\u2019t likely have prevented any of the recent mass shootings that have garnered national attention. The Obama administration acknowledged it couldn\u2019t quantify how many gun sales would be newly subjected to background checks, nor how many currently unregistered gun sellers would have to obtain a license.<\/p>\n

Pushing back on that critique, Obama said every time the issue is debated, gun rights groups argue the steps wouldn\u2019t necessarily have stopped the last massacre, \u201cso why bother trying?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI reject that thinking,\u201d Obama said, arguing it would be worth it if the measures would prevent even a single gun death. \u201cWe maybe can\u2019t save everybody, but we could save some.\u201d<\/p>\n

To lend a personal face to the issue, the White House assembled a cross-section of Americans whose lives were altered by the nation\u2019s most searing recent gun tragedies, including former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and relatives of victims from Charleston, S.C., at Virginia Tech. Mark Barden, whose son was shot to death at Sandy Hook Elementary School, introduced the president with a declaration that \u201cwe are better than this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Invoking the words of Martin Luther King Jr., Obama said, \u201cWe need to feel the fierce urgency of now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Obama\u2019s actions carved a predictably partisan fault line through the presidential campaign. Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, both competing for the nomination from Obama\u2019s party, praised the president and pledged to build on his actions if elected. The Republican field formed a chorus of voices vowing to annul the whole package, with Marco Rubio claiming Obama was \u201cObama is obsessed with undermining the Second Amendment.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Congress, Democrats and Republicans similarly lined up on opposite sides. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said Obama was acting within his \u201cclear authority,\u201d but echoed his call for Congress to finish the job. But House Speaker Paul Ryan predicted a certain challenge in the courts.<\/p>\n

\u201cRather than focus on criminals and terrorists, he goes after the most law-abiding of citizens,\u201d said Ryan, R-Wis. \u201cHis words and actions amount to a form of intimidation that undermines liberty.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Obama, the executive actions mark a return late in his presidency to an issue he\u2019s elevated time and again but has been unable until now to advance. By bypassing Congress, though, Obama is limited to steps far more modest than what he and likeminded lawmakers had long envisioned.<\/p>\n

After the Sandy Hook shooting, Obama in 2013, Obama sought far-reaching, bipartisan legislation that went beyond background checks to ban certain assault-style weapons and cap the size of ammunition clips. When the effort collapsed in the Senate, the White House said it was thoroughly researching the president\u2019s powers to identify every legal step he could take on his own. A more recent spate of gun-related atrocities, including in San Bernardino, California, shootings have spurred the administration to give the issue another look.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Reach Josh Lederman on Twitter at http:\/\/twitter.com\/joshledermanAP. His work can be found at http:\/\/bigstory.ap.org\/author\/josh-lederman<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2014 President Barack Obama, at one point wiping tears from his cheek, unveiled his plan Tuesday to tighten control and enforcement of firearms in the U.S., using his presidential powers in the absence of legal changes he implored Congress to pass. Obama accused the gun lobby of taking Congress hostage, but said \u201cthey cannot […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":30072,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[65],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-30071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30071"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30071\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30071"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=30071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}