AP Exclusive: Obama offers new gun control steps

[The Straight Story]

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Striving to take action where Congress would not, the Obama administration announced new steps Thursday on gun control, curbing the import of military surplus weapons and proposing to close a little-known loophole that lets felons and others circumvent background checks by registering guns to corporations.

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 to reduce gun 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 a cause he took up after 20 first graders and six adults were gunned down last year in an elementary school in Newtown, Conn.

One new policy will end a government practice that lets military weapons, sold or donated by the U.S. to allies, be reimported into the U.S. by private entities, where some may end up on the streets. The White House said the U.S. has approved 250,000 of those guns to be reimported since 2005; under the new policy, only museums and a few other entities like the government will be eligible to reimport military-grade firearms.

The Obama administration is also proposing a federal rule to stop those who would be ineligible to pass a background check from skirting the law by registering a gun 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 guns.

Vice President Joe Biden, Obama's point-man on gun control after the Newtown tragedy thrust guns into the national spotlight, was set to unveil the new actions Thursday at the White House.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_GUN_CONTROL?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT#245acc75-ff76-4bc6-851f-e76c7dabf88d

[Lee-Lee]

1. Interesting- one was already in the works, the other pointless

I had a BATFE agent tell me years ago they wanted to close the trust/corporation loophole. It is just another piece of fallout from the idea of corporate personhood.

The import ban is just stupid. Since it only applies to stuff originally made in the USA, all that would be eligible for import are WWII era guns, like all the ones we gave to Korea years ago. They certainly are not weapons used by criminals. This one will just piss off moderate collectors of vintage stuff, an can be used by the other side to show that Democrats are going too far on banning stuff not related to crime.

So one thing that was already in the works, and one that won't affect crime or misuse, just piss off collectors.