States Lead the Way in Addressing Gun Violence

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(The Progressive) To sidestep a gridlocked Congress, President Obama announced Tuesday that he will issue executive orders to require anyone “in the business of selling firearms” to be licensed and therefore required to conduct background checks.

As The New York Times has reported, the executive orders will also direct agencies to engage in more gun research, encourage more federal prosecution of domestic violence cases, request new funding for 200 law enforcement agents, and improve access to mental health care.

“This is not going to solve every violent crime in the country,” Obama said Monday. “It is not going to prevent every mass shooting. It will potentially save lives in this country and spare families the pain and extraordinary loss when they lose loved ones to gun violence.”

Although the proposals were more modest than the twenty-three measures Obama proposed after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting that killed twenty children and six adults in 2012, Republicans, including presidential frontrunner Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, have vowed to rescind the measures.

Congress has not passed a major gun control law since 1994, when it approved an assault weapon ban, as part of a larger crime-related bill signed by then President Bill Clinton. The law expired in 2004 and was never renewed despite dogged attempts to overcome GOP opposition by Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, a New York Democrat whose husband had died in a mass shooting. ..................(more)

- See more at: http://progressive.org/news/2016/01/188489/states-lead-way-addressing-gun-violence#sthash.WuTDJsjX.dpuf