US Vice-President Joe Biden makes brief remarks to the press at the beginning of a meeting about gun control. (photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Joe Biden: Obama Prepared to Use Executive Action on Gun Control
10 January 13
Vice-president promises swift action from administration at inaugural meeting of national task force on gun control
resident Barack Obama is considering the use of an executive order to restrict access to guns or ammunition in the wake of nationwide revulsion in the US over the Connecticut school shootings, vice-president Joe Biden said Wednesday.
Such a move would be deeply controversial in the gun
lobby, but Biden said the president was determined to explore every
legislative avenue.
"The president is going to act," Biden said in a
briefing to reporters before the inaugural meeting of a new national
task force on gun control. "Executive order, executive action that can
be taken; we haven't decided what that is yet. But we're compiling it
all with the help of the attorney general and all the rest of the
cabinet members as well as legislative action, we believe, is required."
Biden did not specify what kind of action the
president might take. In the past the Obama administration has used
executive orders, which have the force of law, to require gun dealers to
report when customers buy multiple high-powered rifles and to increase
penalties for violating gun laws. A new order, nearly certain to face
legal challenges, could seek to tighten enforcement of laws governing
private sales of guns or to beef up background checks.
"We are not going to get caught up in the notion that unless we can do everything we're going to do nothing," Biden said. "It's critically important that we act."
Any unilateral action by the president seemed sure to
inflame gun advocates, who argue that gun sales are protected under the
second amendment and who equate gun control with tyranny. Gun-rights
groups are organising a "Gun Appreciation Day" on the weekend of the
president's second inauguration. The influential conservative website
the Drudge Report illustrated the story covering Biden's remarks with
pictures of Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin.
Biden said that the 14 December massacre at a
Connecticut elementary school, in which 20 first-graders were shot dead
in their classrooms by a man armed with a semi-automatic rifle, had
mobilised the nation to act.
"Every once in a while there's something that awakens
the conscience of the country, and that tragic event did it in a way
like nothing I've seen in my career," Biden said.
The national taskforce includes the victims of mass
shootings and gun control advocates. The group plans to meet Thursday
with representatives of the National Rifle Association and gun retailers
including Walmart. The taskforce was to deliver recommendations to the
president as early as mid-month.
New York could become the first state to pass gun
control laws after the Connecticut massacre, aides to Governor Andrew
Cuomo announced in advance of his annual address planned for Wednesday
afternoon. Lawmakers in Albany worked late into the night Tuesday to
settle on new rules to further restrict the sales of assault rifles and
large-capacity magazines, and to require the regular renewal of gun
permits, among other measures.
The NRA has vocally opposed calls for new gun control legislation, saying that more guns are needed to improve public safety.
"If it's crazy to call for armed officers in our
schools to protect our children, then call me crazy," NRA head Wayne
LaPierre said a week after the Connecticut shooting. "I think the
American people think it's crazy not to do it. It's the one thing that
would keep people safe."
Deaths from guns are on pace to surpass traffic deaths in the United States by 2015, according to a Bloomberg News study. In 2011, the latest year for which detailed statistics are available, there were 12,664 murders in the US. Of those, 8,583 were caused by firearms, down 3% from a year earlier.
The Biden taskforce is part of new wave of gun control
activity across the country. Former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords,
who was shot in the head in a 2011 massacre in Tucson that killed six,
announced on Tuesday the formation of a political action committee to
fight the NRA.
"Special interests purporting to represent gun owners
but really advancing the interests of an ideological fringe have used
big money and influence to cow Congress into submission," she wrote in an editorial with husband Mark Kelly,
an astronaut. "Rather than working to find the balance between our
rights and the regulation of a dangerous product, these groups have cast
simple protections for our communities as existential threats to
individual liberties."
New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg is heading up a
campaign called Demand a Plan that has produced dozens of videos in
which family members of victims of gun violence call for new gun laws.
Advocates have proposed a coalition of mothers against gun violence that
would be modeled after Madd, the anti-drunken driving group that
succeeded in lowering the legal blood-alcohol content for drivers
nationally.
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2013-01-10 13:40
Ok so an Executive Order might be signed in order to address the gun issue. Quick reaction which would be odd.
Big banks plunder the American people, 29 trillion dollars worth gets taken from us, the system isn't regulated in any way. Number of legislation or Executive actions taken. Zero.
Doesn't that even scare you?
Big banks plunder the American people, 29 trillion dollars worth gets taken from us, the system isn't regulated in any way. Number of legislation or Executive actions taken. Zero.
Doesn't that even scare you?