Obama's 23 Executive Actions on Gun Control

Quote : Today, the President is announcing that he and the Administration will [foxnewsinsider.com]: 1. Issue a Presidential Memorandum to require federal agencies to make relevant data available to the federal background check system.

Does anyone know what data they consider "relevant"?

Quote : 2. Address unnecessary legal barriers, particularly relating to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, that may prevent states from making information available to the background check system.

What do you think this will do for mental health care in this country? Do you think people will be more likely to open up to their health care provider if HIPAA no longer protects their privacy and it can be used against them?

Quote : 3. Improve incentives for states to share information with the background check system.

What sort of incentives? Our tax dollars? What information are they not sharing currently that the feds want, and why do the feds want it?

Quote : 4. Direct the Attorney General to review categories of individuals prohibited from having a gun to make sure dangerous people are not slipping through the cracks.

Eric Holder is hardly the person to be making any of these decisions. He is as biased and corrupt as they come. We haven't even gotten to the bottom of Fast & Furious, and now we're putting more gun policies in his hands?

Quote : 5. Propose rulemaking to give law enforcement the ability to run a full background check on an individual before returning a seized gun.

Can't they do this already? Are they changing the prerequisites for seizing a gun?

Quote : 6. Publish a letter from ATF to federally licensed gun dealers providing guidance on how to run background checks for private sellers.

Waste of time and tax dollars. It's already federal law for them to do so. They know how to do it as if they don't, they become federal criminals. The ATF has their FFL on file. This is not rocket science. It's a phone # or a web site. Both are easy.

Quote : 7. Launch a national safe and responsible gun ownership campaign.

What does this mean? The NRA and numerous other organizations already do this, which is why accidental gun-related deaths are at an all time low in recorded U.S. history. Unnecessary executive order & waste of tax dollars to solve a problem that has already been solved.

Quote : 8. Review safety standards for gun locks and gun safes (Consumer Product Safety Commission).

Redundant waste of time & tax dollars. Gun locks are already handed out with purchased guns. Safes are plenty regulated by the private industry. If a safe fails, people won't buy that company's safes anymore. All safes can be defeated given enough time and the right tools.

Quote : 9. Issue a Presidential Memorandum to require federal law enforcement to trace guns recovered in criminal investigations.

Don't they do this already? Is there evidence to support doing this? Has it been effective in the past, and where are the data to support it?

Quote : 10. Release a DOJ report analyzing information on lost and stolen guns and make it widely available to law enforcement.

How would this have helped in Newtown? He allegedly stole his mothers guns & promptly went to the school.

Quote : 11. Nominate an ATF director.

With Holder as AG, I can only imagine what kind of nut job will be running the ATF.

Quote : 12. Provide law enforcement, first responders, and school officials with proper training for active shooter situations.

They already have this and don't need an executive order to do this.

Quote : 13. Maximize enforcement efforts to prevent gun violence and prosecute gun crime.

Finally! If he actually goes through with this, that would be a huge step in the right direction instead of issuing 23 orders and a bunch of new laws when we don't enforce our current laws. But we shouldn't need an executive order to say, "Pretty please, enforce the existing laws." Our efforts should already have been maximized if any of these gun control advocates truly cared about the purported end game of reducing violent crime. Why would anyone suggest new laws when we don't enforce the 20,000 we have?

Quote : 14. Issue a Presidential Memorandum directing the Centers for Disease Control to research the causes and prevention of gun violence.

They have done so before. They found that the 10-yr AWB did not reduce violent crime rates. Yet, Obama, Feinstein, et al are proposing another one.

Quote : 15. Direct the Attorney General to issue a report on the availability and most effective use of new gun safety technologies and challenge the private sector to develop innovative technologies.

There is nothing wrong with current gun safety technologies, and none of them failed to result in Newtown, Aurora, etc. Those were deliberate acts, not failures of safety measures on guns. Again, Holder is one of the last people I'd want doing this, and the private sector has this under control without executive orders.

Quote : 16. Clarify that the Affordable Care Act does not prohibit doctors asking their patients about guns in their homes.

What evidence is there that doctors have adequate training with respect to firearms to be doling out advice on them? Should we add another year to residency for this training? We already know the AAP is openly anti-gun. What agenda do you think some of its doctors will push in the weighted doctor-patient relationship?

Quote : 17. Release a letter to health care providers clarifying that no federal law prohibits them from reporting threats of violence to law enforcement authorities.

Doctors can already involuntarily commit people who are threats to themselves or others.

Quote : 18. Provide incentives for schools to hire school resource officers.

Translation: money for armed guards, which is what the NRA recommended and Obama said he was against.

Quote : 19. Develop model emergency response plans for schools, houses of worship and institutions of higher education.

i.e. gun-free zones. How about we just stop making them gun-free zones and pay attention to where these mass shootings occur?

Quote : 20. Release a letter to state health officials clarifying the scope of mental health services that Medicaid plans must cover.

Why do we need an executive order for this? Hold a press conference.

Quote : 21. Finalize regulations clarifying essential health benefits and parity requirements within ACA exchanges.

What does this have to do with gun control?

Quote : 22. Commit to finalizing mental health parity regulations.

What does this mean?

Quote : 23. Launch a national dialogue led by Secretaries Sebelius and Duncan on mental health.

B/c we, the lowly common folk, are incapable of having a national dialogue w/o executive order or the powers that be?

It doesn't sound like any of them really do much of anything.

These 23 executive actions can basically be summed up as "politely ask people to stop shooting each other." So much for all the people sure he was going to confiscate all their guns...

Then there's the cost [weeklystandard.com]....

Quote : $4 billion for the president’s proposal “to help keep 15,000 cops on the streets in cities and towns across the country.” (That is roughly $266,000 per police officer.)

Seems a bit excessive.

Quote : $20 million to “give states stronger incentives to make [relevant] data available [for background checks] … “$50 million for this purpose in FY2014”

Why the need for expenditures on this?

Quote : “$14 million to help train 14,000 more police officers and other public and private personnel to respond to active shooter situations.”

Our issue is not that we don't have enough police officers. It's that we have zones that we disarm victims in by law, and that's where mass shooters target.

Quote : “$10 million for the Centers for Disease Control to conduct further research, including investigating the relationship between video games, media images, and violence.”

We don't need to pay them to do this. They found the AWB (94-04) ineffective at reducing violent crime. Gun-control related research has been going on at universities and other institutions all along, including Harvard [harvard.edu]. A waste of our tax dollars.

Quote : $20 million to expand the National Violent Death Reporting System.

Why the need for this? Doesn't the FBI system work well enough? I can pull up tabulated data [fbi.gov] on Google in 1 minute.

Quote : $150 million to “put up to 1,000 new school resource officers and school counselors on the job.”

Resource officers = armed LEOs. This is what the NRA suggested. Why not just remove the ban on guns so that a would-be shooter doesn't know if, whom, or how many people are armed? That costs $150 million less than this proposal.

Quote : “$30 million of one-time grants to states to help their school districts develop and implement emergency management plans.”

They already do this.

Quote : $50 million to help 8,000 schools “create safer and more nurturing school climates.”

Which 8k schools? How did he choose? What about the other schools? No nurturing for them?

Quote : $15 million to “provide “Mental Health First Aid” training for teachers.”

What is "mental health first aid"?

Quote : $40 million for school districts to “work with law enforcement, mental health agencies, and other local organizations to assure students with mental health issues or other behavioral issues are referred to the services they need.”

Are there barriers to this now?

Quote : $25 million for state-based strategies that support “young people ages 16 to 25 with mental health or substance abuse issues.”

Opening up HIPAA to let the government into mental health records will only undermine this.

Quote : $25 million to “offer students mental health services for trauma or anxiety, conflict resolution programs, and other school-based violence prevention strategies.”

This is already available to them.

Quote : $50 million to “train social workers, counselors, psychologists, and other mental health professionals.”

Train them to do what? Aren't they trained already? Doesn't becoming one of these professionals require training? Does Obama know more about these things than they do?

Quote from Frogstar : It doesn't sound like any of them really do much of anything.

This is a good thing, IMO. Hopefully whatever version of an AWB that 0bama plans to back will do equally little.

Quote from BigBananaMess : This is a good thing, IMO. Hopefully whatever version of an AWB that 0bama plans to back will do equally little.

Doesn't really matter as it's not going to go anywhere in the near future anyway. A good thing, IMO.

are there more gun violence in obama's administration than there were during bush's? or were they just more publicized?

Quote from AZVike : Doesn't really matter as it's not going to go anywhere in the near future anyway. A good thing, IMO.

It would be nice to have this in the past. My choice of target ammo is backordered into July. There is essentially nothing out there in an AR platforms or magazines. I'll be glad when this panic buying madness ends.

Quote from BigBananaMess : It would be nice to have this in the past. My choice of target ammo is backordered into July. There is essentially nothing out there in an AR platforms or magazines. I'll be glad when this panic buying madness ends.

And to blame for that would be the tinfoil hat crowd. Christ, you can't even find handgun ammo or 22 anywhere.

Quote from AZVike : And to blame for that would be the tinfoil hat crowd.

The tinfoil hat crowd basing their opinion on history? It's been a while since there was this much political outcry to ban something, and it would certainly seem that people aren't as confident in the current GOP House at not passing something to deal with the noise.

I'm from a pretty conservative and gun loving state, yet I am fairly confident our newly elected Senator would vote 'Yea' on a new ban should the need[s of her party] arise.

Quote from paperboy05 : The tinfoil hat crowd basing their opinion on history? It's been a while since there was this much political outcry to ban something, and it would certainly seem that people aren't as confident in the current GOP House at not passing something to deal with the noise.

History as in the last few rounds of panic buying? I guess so. DId anything actually happen when Obama was (first) elected, or was it just paranoia that fed that run on the armories? I imagine that one of these times the "tyrant which currently occupies the White House" will actually come knocking on your door to grab your guns, but I'm not losing any sleep over that since I have real threats to concern myself with. Asteroids.

Quote from AZVike : History as in the last few rounds of panic buying? I guess so. DId anything actually happen when Obama was (first) elected, or was it just paranoia that fed that run on the armories?

Obama himself didn't have to do anything explicit. He surrounded himself by individuals that aren't kind to gun owners and himself voted for restricting gun rights in IL. Based on that information and the fact certain firearms were grandfathered in the last AWB, it would be no surprise that guns would be sold at a higher rate then when Bush was around.

Quote from paperboy05 : Obama himself didn't have to do anything explicit. He surrounded himself by individuals that aren't kind to gun owners and himself voted for restricting gun rights in IL. Based on that information and the fact certain firearms were grandfathered in the last AWB, it would be no surprise that guns would be sold at a higher rate then when Bush was around.

And of course, rattling the "they're gonna take yer guns away" cage is good for business.

Obama needs to step up and address the much more serious problem of gun violance committed by young black males in this country.
But he won't. No one on the left wants to touch that issue...