Obama suggested reintroducing the ban during his re-election campaign. He had wanted legislation similar to the version in effect between and , which had outlawed a broad range of semi-automatic weapons.
He included the ban as part of a set of executive actions in January , following the massacre of 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Ct. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. Her bill would have banned the future sale, transfer, manufacture and importation of semi-automatic weapons, as well as magazines that held more than 10 cartridges and other weapons with certain cosmetic characteristics.
David Cicilline, D-R. Neither bill succeeded in the Republican-controlled Congress. Jaclyn Schildkraut, an assistant professor at the State University of New York at Oswego's Department of Public Justice, said that part of the reason was because the prior ban didn't stop mass shootings. Stymied by gridlock and unable to order a ban on his own, Obama opted instead to strengthen current gun laws — a separate promise we've rated Promise Kept.
As some polls showed dwindling public support for an assault weapons ban, Obama curbed his call for a ban. He still worked to strengthen background checks, restart federal gun research, and provide more resources to federal agencies. Politico, " Poll: Support for assault weapons ban drops to lowest level in 20 years ," Dec. For almost 50 years, the ATF regulations have interpreted this somewhat vague phrase by distinguishing those who sell guns commercially as a means of livelihood and those non-commercial sellers who transfer the odd gun every so often.
Commercial sellers are required to perform background checks through the NICS system, while non-commercial private sellers are subject to a federal statute requiring that the transferor not know or have reason to know that the recipient of the weapon is prohibited from having it. Every transfer, in other words, is currently regulated by federal law. The only difference is which law applies.
The guideline document represents an outline of current federal law, including caselaw based on the longstanding interpretation of the statute, rather than a change. Instead, the ATF issued a guidance document that simply explicates what this legal requirement means, providing examples of the sorts of things that would indicate that a given individual is in the gun business, rather than conducting the occasional personal sale as a hobbyist or as part of an estate liquidation, or something of that sort.
According to both the White House release and the ATF guidance, the various indicia identified in the guidance are, in turn, based upon what federal courts have found in relevant cases. The relevant court decisions are not cited or otherwise identified in the document, and I have asked both ATF and the White House for more information on this point.
Taken at face value, the new ATF guidance is thus nothing more than a restatement of existing legal requirements. Put another way, it merely identifies those who are already subject to the relevant federal requirements and does not in any way expand the universe of those gun sellers who are required to obtain a license and perform background checks.
In other words, it is — as the document says — a guidance, and not a substantive rule. It has no legal effect. In the event that the administration attempts to enforce the law as if there has been a substantive change, Adler points out that there would be an immediate legal challenge:.
A consequence of choosing to issue a guidance document instead of a new regulation, however, is that the guidance document cannot have legal force. To be sure, sometimes agencies do one thing while saying they are doing another — issuing a new substantive regulation that changes the relevant legal requirements but calling it a guidance.
Yet when agencies do this, they make themselves legally vulnerable. Republican Senator Chuck Grassley, who led the repeal effort, said the regulation "unfairly stigmatises" people with mental illness and infringed on their constitutional right to bear arms.
Mr Grassley used eating and sleep disorders as examples that could fall under the regulation requiring a more extensive background check. The regulation, however, does not stipulate that any person with a disability would be affected. Rather, it focuses on people who are unable to deal with their own finances and require a trustee to administer them.
But Mr Grassley was not alone in criticising the Obama era regulation. Fast-forward four years to January , and gun purchases for the month were recorded at 1,, While gun sales are typically strong during the holiday shopping season, this uptick was also likely a reaction to the Sandy Hook shooting and possible new legislation. Every single day," he told ABC News. In January , Obama signed 23 executive actions relating to gun control that are still intact. But the two major pieces of legislation that came in the wake of the shooting both failed to pass the Senate.
One, the Assault Weapons Ban of , was led by Sen. Dianne Feinstein , D-Calif. But ultimately, many advocates for more stringent gun controls have been left disappointed by the Obama administration and what it has been able to achieve. The rash of executive actions after the Sandy Hook massacre and a package of 10 provisions unveiled this January aim at reducing gun violence by requiring background checks for people trying to buy guns through trusts, hiring more Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agents and FBI agents to process the background checks and directing government research into gun safety technologies, among other actions.
In he signed a law that enabled people to take loaded guns into national parks, and later that year reversed a decade-long ban that had stopped people from taking unloaded guns in checked bags on trains.
That is not how many gun owners feel, however. The sharp rise in gun sales during the Obama administration appears to be a reaction to concerns from Second Amendment supporters that the president was set on taking their guns away. That certainly appears to be true in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre. NSSF figures show record monthly highs for the first five months of Even without any successful bill in Congress, gun enthusiasts still point at action, both by Obama and on the state level, to back up their belief that rights are being infringed.
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