“If there is even one thing we can do to reduce this violence, if there is even one life that can be saved, then we’ve got an obligation to try it, “Obama said. “And I am gonna do my part.”
Obama’s plan, which senior White House said will cost about $500 million, includes a whopping 23 executive actions that bypass Congress – a step likely to inflame conservatives and gun-rights advocates.
The President read from letters of four children who joined him Wednesday after they who wrote him in the wake of the shooting just over a month ago at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. - the tragedy that compelled the President to act.
One of the letters came from a young girl who wrote that while she herself was not afraid, she could “not bear the thought of losing” any of her four brothers.
“This is our first task as a society. Keeping our children safe. This is how we will be judged. And their voices should compel us to change,” the President said.Obama urged Congress to ban assault weapons, bar manufacture of ammunition magazines that hold more than 10 bullets and eliminate a loophole exempting private gun sellers from conducting background checks on buyers.
He asked lawmakers to expand a ban on making armor piercing bullets to make possession and transfer of the bullets illegal and to make gun trafficking a federal crime.
“Congress must act soon,” Obama said.
Getting most those proposals through Congress, especially the Republican-run House, will be hard, and many Democrats already say passing an assault weapons ban is not possible.
Whatever Congress does, the executive branch will immediately take unilateral steps to tighten enforcement of existing guns laws.
The proposal includes ordering the Centers for Disease Control to start research on the causes and prevention of gun violence, despite an existing law passed by Congress that the agency has treated as barring such research.
A senior White House official said White House lawyers had determined the law, which bars the agency from advocating gun control, does not prevent research.
“We don’t benefit from ignorance,” Obama said. We don’t benefit from not knowing the science of this epidemic of violence.”
He suggested that one of the issues the CDC would examine is the effect, if any, of violent video games on young minds. The White House is also asking Congress to fund new research including a $10 million for research on links between video games and violence.
Other executive actions include adding incentives for states to share information with a national background check systems and all federal agencies to make mental health data available to the federal background check system.
White House officials, who said Obama’s plan will have support from a large majority of Americans, said they are launching interactive features online to encourage Americans to weigh in support of the proposals.
And Obama urged Americans to call members of Congress to push them to support his legislative proposals.
“The only way we can change is if the American people demand it,” Obama said.
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