[Unburdened by re-election worries and empowered by law to act without Congress, U.S. President Barack Obama could take action to improve background checks on gun buyers, ban certain gun imports and bolster oversight of dealers...
Obama's appointees at the U.S. Justice Department have been studying ideas since the January 8, 2011, shooting of U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords...
Christopher Schroeder, who ran the Justice Department's review, said it looked at possible legislation to send to Congress as well as action the administration could take itself...
"You always look at both, because if you can do it administratively it's certainly a less involved process," said Schroeder, who has since returned to a professorship at Duke Law School....
A pro-gun control mayors' group co-chaired by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has pushed the Obama administration since 2009 to adopt 40 recommendations it said were allowed under existing law...
One of the 40 has been put into effect, said Mark Glaze, director of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, and even that recommendation - requiring gun dealers to report sales of multiple semiautomatic weapons - drew heated resistance...
In 2011, when the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) adopted a version of the recommendation aimed at dealers in states near the U.S.-Mexico border, gun makers sued and congressional Republicans tried to eliminate funding for the rule...
A judge upheld it, allowing it to go into effect. The case is now on appeal.
The administration also has leeway to act in how it defines certain categories of people prohibited from buying a gun.
Federal law bars anyone "who has been adjudicated as a mental defective," but it does not specify whether that means only a court can disqualify someone, said Michael Volkov, a former Republican Justice Department official now at the law firm LeClairRyan...]
http://news.yahoo.com/even-without-...RhaWQDBHBzdGNhdANob21lBHB0A3NlY3Rpb25z;_ylv=3
Obama's appointees at the U.S. Justice Department have been studying ideas since the January 8, 2011, shooting of U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords...
Christopher Schroeder, who ran the Justice Department's review, said it looked at possible legislation to send to Congress as well as action the administration could take itself...
"You always look at both, because if you can do it administratively it's certainly a less involved process," said Schroeder, who has since returned to a professorship at Duke Law School....
A pro-gun control mayors' group co-chaired by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has pushed the Obama administration since 2009 to adopt 40 recommendations it said were allowed under existing law...
One of the 40 has been put into effect, said Mark Glaze, director of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, and even that recommendation - requiring gun dealers to report sales of multiple semiautomatic weapons - drew heated resistance...
In 2011, when the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) adopted a version of the recommendation aimed at dealers in states near the U.S.-Mexico border, gun makers sued and congressional Republicans tried to eliminate funding for the rule...
A judge upheld it, allowing it to go into effect. The case is now on appeal.
The administration also has leeway to act in how it defines certain categories of people prohibited from buying a gun.
Federal law bars anyone "who has been adjudicated as a mental defective," but it does not specify whether that means only a court can disqualify someone, said Michael Volkov, a former Republican Justice Department official now at the law firm LeClairRyan...]
http://news.yahoo.com/even-without-...RhaWQDBHBzdGNhdANob21lBHB0A3NlY3Rpb25z;_ylv=3
