



Narrowing the background-check loopholes



President Barack Obama's executive actions don't expand the current law on criminal background checks for people buying guns, but they do clarify some of the law's ambiguous parts and toughen enforcement.

There are two common gun-sale loopholes that the President is trying to narrow. One consists of online and gun-show vendors failing to perform background checks on buyers. The law requires that they do, but some claim to be "hobbyists" to earn an exemption. Mr. Obama has now formally clarified that many purported hobbyists may in fact be "engaged in the business" of selling guns, a signal to law enforcement.

Another frequently used loophole is registering as a corporation or trust in order to buy guns without undergoing a background check. Mr. Obama's executive action establishes a regulation that will ban the practice.

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The new rules and guidelines will be enforced by 230 new FBI staffers dedicated to processing the country's 63,000 daily background-check requests. The President's next budget will also seek funding for 200 new agents and investigators in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), though a Republican Congress could choke that money off.

The goal is to have checks being processed 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and better notification when a banned person tries to buy a gun.





Better tracking of gun sales



In an indication of how insubstantial some of the President's latest gun-control actions are, the administration trumpeted a conference call and a memo by the Attorney-General Loretta Lynch to her regional counterparts, urging them to take gun control and domestic violence seriously.

But there are meatier promises along these lines too. ATF has set up a desk to tackle illegal gun-trafficking online – the Internet Investigation Center. And it will pour an extra $4-million (U.S.) into a ballistics database that helps investigators connect guns to crimes.

Finally, the agency is working on a rule that will force gun dealers to alert law enforcement when their wares get lost or stolen in transit.

Mental-health funding

Highlighting Mr. Obama's focus on mass shootings rather than more stringent regulation of guns writ large, he will be asking Congress for $500-million in new funding for better access to mental-health services. It's part of a suite of proposals designed to keep guns out of the hands of mentally ill people.

The President is also directing the Social Security Administration, which administers retirement and disability benefits, to start including information in regular criminal background checks about people on their rolls who are prohibited from buying guns because of mental-health issues.

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And the federal department of Health and Human Services is finalizing a rule to loosen restrictions on state governments sharing information about people banned from owning guns for mental-health reasons.

It's a piecemeal approach designed to reduce the number of mentally ill mass shooters rather than the larger problem of mentally healthy people committing gun violence.





Smart-gun technology



The vaguest element of the President's action may also prove to be the most controversial. He called on various government agencies – the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security and Defence – to conduct or sponsor research into "smart gun" technology, and then track its progress periodically.

Smart guns feature technology that makes them safer to use, most notably finger-print sensors to keep unwanted hands from firing them. But many gun-rights advocates have denounced the concept, arguing that the technology will have little impact on safety and could be used to track gun owners.

Some gun-control proponents back the concept, however. A group of parents of children killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre recently teamed with Silicon Valley tech firms to raise money for gun-safety research.