The executive orders also direct the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to begin research into gun violence, which administration officials and gun control groups say will help make the case for new gun safety regulations. During the gun debate this past spring on Capitol Hill, there was little available data about the reasons for gun violence, buying patterns and other gun-related public health issues. The reason is that Congress, under pressure from the gun lobby in the 1990s, redirected money that had been allocated for gun research by the C.D.C. and wrote legislation that was interpreted as a ban on government-financed studies of gun violence.

The Institute of Medicine, an independent nonprofit organization, released a 69-page report this month that recommended research on the characteristics of firearm violence, preventive strategies, gun safety technology and the role of video games and other popular media on gun violence. The Centers for Disease Control is now moving to study some of these areas.

Gun control groups say that the administration’s actions are the closest thing they have to rolling back two decades of an expansion in gun rights in both state legislatures and on Capitol Hill. “The simple act of saying we are no longer going to prohibit agencies from doing basic research on what happens when guns fall into the wrong hands and kill people is a sea change,” Mr. Glaze said. He also said that states had responded well when they had been given the resources and historically tended to respond well when they faced the risk of losing scarce funds. “There are a lot of people who are not in the system who should be,” Mr. Glaze said. Administration officials say that a few states, like Pennsylvania, have already started to increase entries in the database.

“As a group these efforts work in tandem,” said Sarah Bianchi, the director of economic and domestic policy for Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. “But among the most important was expanding the background check system. There are different reasons some states don’t send all their records: resources, confusion about the law. We wanted to do everything we could to strengthen the system.”

Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, expressed dismay at the recent developments. “President Obama abused his power by imposing his administration’s policies through executive action instead of working with Congress and allowing the issue to be debated,” he said. “As a strong defender of the Second Amendment, I will continue to oppose the president’s attempts to undermine Americans’ constitutional right to bear arms.”

Next week Mr. Biden will speak to gun groups, his first public event on gun control since the failure of the Senate bill.