By David Jackson and Aamer Madhani, USA TODAY
President Obama unveiled the most sweeping set of gun-control
proposals in two decades on Wednesday, a package that includes universal
background checks on all gun buyers and a renewed ban on
"military-style" assault weapons.
Opponents were quick to take
issue with the plan: The National Rifle Association issued a statement
saying that "only honest, law-abiding gun owners will be affected and
our children will remain vulnerable to the inevitability of more
tragedy."
Obama, speaking at a White House ceremony, also proposed
restricting ammunition magazines to no more than 10 rounds, as well as
new school safety and mental health programs, all designed to prevent
shootings like the one last month at an elementary school in
Connecticut.
"This is our first task as a society, keeping our children safe," Obama said. "This is how we will be judged."
The
president and Vice President Biden - who developed the plan after a
series of meetings with 229 groups involved in gun violence issues -
appeared with the children who wrote letters to the White House
expressing concern about gun violence.
After
reading some of those letters, Obama said: "And these are our kids.
This is what they're thinking about. And so what we should be thinking
about is our responsibility to care for them, and shield them from
harm."
Also attending were family members of victims of the Dec.
14 attack that killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook
Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. "Our hearts go out to you," Biden
said, saying he and Obama want to "honor the memory of your children."
Obama
said no law can "prevent every senseless act," but can be valuable if
it can prevent one attack. "If there is even one life that can be saved,
we've got an obligation to try it," the president said.
The White
House issued a written plan with four goals: keeping guns out of the
wrong hands, getting "weapons of war" off the streets, upgrading school
safety and improving mental health services.
Among the specific proposals:
- Keeping
guns out of the wrong hands. The White House is proposing "universal
background checks" designed to target private gun sales that are not
covered by the current system, which applies to federally licensed
dealers. The plan also includes four executive orders designed to remove
barriers to information sharing among state and federal agencies.
- Restricting
"weapons of war." Obama's plan calls for limiting ammunition magazines
to no more than 10 rounds. The document notes that the Newtown killings
and the July attack in a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., involved the
kinds of semiautomatic weapons that were targeted by the assault-weapons
ban that expired in 2004. The administration also wants to maintain the
effort to ban armor-piercing bullets.
Biden said he
has no "illusions" about the political challenges, but the Newtown
shooting has shaken the nation's conscience. "The world has changed," he
said.
Still, gun rights supporters criticized many of the
president's plans as ineffective, unconstitutional and politically
motivated. Republican Party Chairman Reince Priebus said the plan
amounts to "an executive power grab that may please his political base
but will not solve the problems at hand."
Such sentiments are
indicative of the battle the proposals face in Congress, especially in
the Republican-run House of Representatives.
"House committees of
jurisdiction will review these recommendations," said Michael Steel, a
spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. "And if the Senate
passes a bill, we will also take a look at that."
House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., said he will consider Obama's recommendations.
"However,
good intentions do not necessarily make good laws," Goodlatte said. He
said he wants to ensure that the proposals will "actually be meaningful
in preventing the taking of innocent life and that they do not trample
on the rights of law-abiding citizens to exercise their constitutionally
guaranteed rights."
Even some Democrats, including Senate
Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., have questioned whether a new
assault-weapons ban can pass Congress.
Reid, a gun rights
supporter, told a Nevada television station over the weekend that "in
the Senate, we're going to do what we think can get through the House."
Not all the dissent is Washington-based.
Texas
Republican Gov. Rick Perry said the Obama plan wouldn't have prevented
the Newtown shootings, which Perry attributed to a "sad young man" who
"was clearly haunted by demons."
"Guns require a finger to pull
the trigger," said Perry, a Republican presidential candidate in 2012,
who added that "the piling on by the political left and their cohorts in
the media to use the massacre of little children to advance a
pre-existing political agenda that would not have saved those children
disgusts me personally."
In Mississippi, Republican Gov. Phil
Bryant called for state legislation making it illegal to enforce any new
federal gun control measures in the state, The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson reports.
Bryant
said in a letter to high-ranking state officials -- even before Obama's
presentation -- that he expected the proposals would "infringe our
constitutional right to keep and bear arms as never before in American
history."
The NRA, the nation's largest gun lobby, has vowed to
fight the gun-control proposals. It has proposed armed guards in all
schools, and expanding databases to block gun purchases by people who
have been declared mentally ill.
Before Obama's event, the NRA
released a video criticizing the president as an "elitist hypocrite" for
opposing armed guards in every school even though his daughters receive
Secret Service protection. White House spokesman Jay Carney called the
ad "repugnant and disgusting."
But there is also plenty of support for the White House effort.
Marsha
Moskowitz, a Sandy Hook, Conn., resident and former bus driver who once
drove some of the kids who were killed in the school massacre, said she
"definitely" agrees with the president's proposals.
"I understand
the Second Amendment, but there's no need for assault weapons in
personal homes or for hunting," Moskowitz said. "If we can get one gun
that was built to kill a mass amount of people out of someone's hands,
I'm all for it."
Michael Pohle Sr., 57, of Flemington, N.J., lost his son, Michael Jr., then 23, in the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007.
"I'm
just so proud -- I don't care whether he's a Democrat or a Republican
-- that he has put this on the table because too many elected leaders
have been so afraid," Pohle said. He likened the journey to the yellow
brick road in The Wizard of Oz. "It's like we're at the start of the yellow brick road now," he said.
Mark
Glaze, director of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, said he expects the
families of the victims from Newtown and several other mass shootings to
be very involved in the effort to push action in Congress. He noted
that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg flew several of the Newtown
families to Washington in his plane. The victim advocates will be only a
part of the coalition, he said.
"It does take a village, and the village is ready to riot," Glaze said.
Some
advocates for the mentally ill expressed cautious optimism that the
nation may finally take meaningful action to repair a broken mental
health system.
"It's a terrible thing that it takes terrible acts
for everyone, from the public to the president, to look comprehensively
at this situation," said Doris Fuller, executive director of the
Treatment Advocacy Center in Virginia. "But we can't think in silos,
such as just looking at gun control. If we leave the mental illness
treatment piece out of it, we will never get to a solution."
Obama
also signed 23 executive orders dedicated to curbing gun violence; they
included directing to federal agencies to make more data available for
background checks, nominating a director for the Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and ordering the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention to do more research on neurological causes of gun
violence.
The president is also proposing harsher punishments
for gun trafficking between states, as well as federal money to help
cities pay for more police officers. In addition, Obama nominated a new
leader for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; his
previous nominee has been held up for years. Other proposals:
- School safety. The plan proposes money to help local school districts hire 1,000 school resource officers and school counselors.
- Mental
health. The administration is proposing Project AWARE, which stands for
Advancing Wellness and Resilience in Education. It would be designed to
reach about 750,00 people to identify mental illness early in young
people and refer them for treatment. Obama said he will direct the CDC
to step up research into the causes of violence, and ask Congress to
fund research into the impact of violent video games on young minds.
It
adds up to the biggest government anti-gun violence program since 1994,
when Congress passed an assault-weapons ban that expired 10 years
later. A year earlier, Congress approved the Brady Bill, requiring
background checks on gun purchasers.
At the White House event,
Obama said he believes in Second Amendment rights to gun ownership, and
knows that nearly all gun owners are law-abiding citizens. His plans, he
said, are aimed at "an irresponsible, law-breaking few."
While
not citing the NRA by name, Obama did denounce groups that gin up "fear"
about a fictitious plot to take away people's guns.
"The only way we can change is if the American people demand it,"' Obama said.
Contributing: Melanie Eversley; Gary Stoller