Obama Announces A War Of Attrition On Gun Ownership

Via the Washington Times, here are President Obama’s 23 executive orders to address gun control.

The list is pretty long on asking American doctors – as though they were federal employees or something – to engage their patients on the issue of guns. Because Americans get to spend so much time talking to their doctors already, right?

1. Issue a presidential memorandum to require federal agencies to make relevant data available to the federal background check system
2. Address unnecessary legal barriers, particularly relating to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, that may prevent states from making information available to the background check system.
3. Improve incentives for states to share information with the background check system.
4. Direct the attorney general to review categories of individuals prohibited from having a gun to make sure dangerous people are not slipping through the cracks.
5. Propose rule-making to give law enforcement the ability to run a full background check on an individual before returning a seized gun.
6. Publish a letter from ATF to federally licensed gun dealers providing guidance on how to run background checks for private sellers.
7. Launch a national safe and responsible gun ownership campaign.
8. Review safety standards for gun locks and gun safes (Consumer Product Safety Commission).
9. Issue a presidential memorandum to require federal law enforcement to trace guns recovered in criminal investigations.
10. Release a Department of Justice report analyzing information on lost and stolen guns and make it widely available to law enforcement.
11. Nominate a new director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
12. Provide law enforcement, first-responders, and school officials with proper training for active shooter situations.
13. Maximize enforcement efforts to prevent gun violence and prosecute gun crime.
14. Issue a presidential memorandum directing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to research the causes and prevention of gun violence.
15. Direct the attorney general to issue a report on the availability and most effective use of new gun-safety technologies and challenge the private sector to develop innovative technologies.
16. Clarify that the Affordable Care Act does not prohibit doctors from asking their patients about guns in their homes.
17. Release a letter to health care providers clarifying that no federal law prohibits them from reporting threats of violence to law enforcement authorities.
18. Provide incentives for schools to hire school-resource officers.
19. Develop model emergency response plans for schools, houses of worship and institutions of higher education.
20. Release a letter to state health officials clarifying the scope of mental health services that Medicaid plans must cover.
21. Finalize regulations clarifying essential health benefits and parity requirements within ACA exchanges.
22. Commit to finalizing mental-health parity regulations.
23. Launch a national dialogue led by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Education Secretary Arne Duncan on mental health.

Via the Weekly Standard, President Obama is also proposing another $4.5 billion in spending:

• $4 billion for the president’s proposal “to help keep 15,000 cops on the streets in cities and towns across the country.” (That is roughly $266,000 per police officer.)

• $20 million to “give states stronger incentives to make [relevant] data available [for background checks] … “$50 million for this purpose in FY2014”

• “$14 million to help train 14,000 more police officers and other public and private personnel to respond to active shooter situations.”

• “$10 million for the Centers for Disease Control to conduct further research, including investigating the relationship between video games, media images, and violence.”

• $20 million to expand the National Violent Death Reporting System.

• $150 million to “put up to 1,000 new school resource officers and school counselors on the job.”

Finally, Obama is asking Congress to issue a new, “tougher” assault weapons ban, ban magazines with capacities larger than 10 rounds, ban armor-piercing bullets, restrictions on semi-automatic weapons and “universal background checks” with few exceptions.

Put together, none of this means your guns will be confiscated. None of this means that guns, generally, will be banned. But it will narrow what sort of guns you can buy. It does mean that buying, possessing and carrying firearms in America is going to be harder.

Which is the point. Obama and his allies know outright bans won’t past muster, politically or legally, so they choose a war of attrition on gun ownership. They hope to make it so arduous, so fraught with political liability, that fewer Americans choose to do it.

The universal background check provision is particularly troubling. Now most private sellers must get a background check before they can sell their guns to another private party? That is going to put a serious dent in gun commerce. Which, of course, is the point.

Here’s the video of the President’s address: