“The question is front and center at the White House as Obama travels to San Bernardino on Friday to meet with the families of victims of the mass shooting Dec. 2, in which a self-radicalized couple shot and killed 14 people in the deadliest terrorist attack in the U.S. since 9/11,” lattimes.com reports. This could be it. The President may unveil his long-anticipated executive orders [further] degrading Americans’ natural, civil and Constitutionally protected right to keep and bears. The Times article gives the background on the CIC’s “frustration” with good old fashioned Constitutional democracy, and suggests the Prez’s possible “remedies” . . .
Advisors are considering a range of steps Obama could take to reinterpret existing law, from small tweaks in how federal agencies conduct gun-related investigations and regulate background checks to a major change like closing the so-called gun show loophole.
As the Brits say, it’s the bus you don’t see that kills you. President Obama could, for example, instruct the FBI not to approve background checks for Americans on the super secret Terrorist Watchlist. He could instruct the ATF to strictly interpret the “sporting purposes” clause that allows companies to import AR-style rifles. He could do a lot of things.
Or nothing much at all. As political junkies will attest, President Obama is known for generating a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing. Obama’s previous slate of gun control-related executive orders following Sandy Hook were so mild I can’t even recall what they were. Oh right: he “ordered” the Centers for Disease Control to resume “gun violence” research. An Executive Order undercut by Congress, who used the power of the purse to deny the CDC funding for semi-scientific anti-gun agitprop.
So the “small tweaks” announcement is the odds-on favorite. That’s not how the LA Times sees it . . .
It’s not clear yet what case his team will offer him, but every sign points to a bold interpretation of Obama’s executive authority. It would be the culmination of a shift in his thinking that began two years ago when the Senate decisively rejected firearms safety measures inspired by a spate of mass killings.
“His commitment to using his authority had been there since that day in 2013,” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said in an interview. “That’s when the president concluded that, unless there was a dramatic change in the political atmosphere, the only option was the administrative one.”
Why would the Prez come out of the despotic closet in San Bernardino, considering the fact that the killers surmounted the most repressive gun control laws in the country? Because Friday is news dump day. And because guns. Watch this space.
UPDATE: washingtontimes.com reports that the President will wait until after the holidays to announce his Executive Orders on gun control. We can hardly wait.