In the midst of an armed occupation in Oregon and gun control advocates urging strict reform, Obama’s background check proposal lacks severity. But a closer look shows an unprecedented step to restrict access and save lives

More than 2,500 miles away from the calm White House east room where Barack Obama will announce his 10-point plan to tackle gun violence on Tuesday, the armed occupation of a federal building by rightwing militia in Oregon is a potent reminder of why even this unprecedented unilateral action by the president has been heavily watered down.



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Campaigners had urged Obama to take much bolder steps to circumvent the National Rifle Association lobby in Congress and deal directly with what he has described as the “scourge of gun violence” across the US.

Among the more confrontational proposals put forward by Everytown for Gun Safety co-founder Michael Bloomberg, when he met with the president to discuss options for executive action, were the immediate arrest of anyone who lied about failing a background check and the confiscation of existing weapons from those who lost the right to buy them due to criminal activity, restraining orders or domestic abuse.



Republican opponents in Washington have promised a court fight against even the more modest background check proposals that remain in the White House plan, but it is not hard to imagine the real battles that might have resulted from the firearms seizures and mass arrests proposed by Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York City.



The continuing siege in Oregon by heavily armed members of the Bundy family – ostensibly prompted not by gun control but the far less inflammatory issue of federal land ownership – would surely prove to be only a mild foretaste of the violent standoffs to come. “From my cold, dead hands,” as former NRA president Charlton Heston used to say.



That is not to say that the proposals that remain in Tuesday’s plan will sit easily with the bitterly divided country, either. Gun sales have soared in recent weeks as rumours correctly swirled that Obama would close a loophole currently allowing many transactions carried out online or at gun shows to avoid the background check system.

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House speaker Paul Ryan, who is leading the official opposition to the measures in Congress despite once supporting similar loophole closures, accused the president of longstanding “dismissiveness” toward the second amendment of the constitution – a reference to the president’s infamous description of small-town America bitterly “clinging to guns and religion”, which many saw as a direct assault on the constitutional right to bear arms.



Yet the background check fix proposed by Obama, and once described as “very reasonable” and “obvious” by Ryan, is far from toothless either.



A research study by Bloomberg’s Everytown group found that a quarter of a million weapons were sold by unlicensed but high-volume sellers through just one website, armslist.com.



The legislative ambiguity in language describing which retailers are deemed to be “engaged in the business” of arms sales means one seller in Florida who claimed to be a hobbyist was acquitted on charges of dealing without a licence despite selling more than 400 guns and making $30,000-$50,000 a year from gun show sales.

The White House proposal for tightening the language goes further than Bloomberg suggested. Despite proposals that a fixed limit be set for the number of guns allowed to be sold informally before background checks kick in, Obama is announcing instead that any volume of transactions could force the seller to obtain a license if other hallmarks of professional activity are detected – something opponents argue could be used to persecute those simply making a sale to a friend or relative.



The background checks will become more comprehensive, too, with measures to encourage states to swap information on those with mental illness – another issue likely to inflame those on the right who see Obama’s Affordable Care Act as an already Orwellian intrusion on their medical privacy.



For campaigners and those watching the US gun epidemic from abroad, such steps may appear as woefully inadequate attempts to deal with the millions of weapons already in circulation. Few of the mass shootings that have captured the headlines in recent weeks were caused by guns obtained from shows or online resellers.



Nevertheless, the White House is adamant that focusing on restricting access to those with a known history of criminality or mental health is an important step that will save lives.



“Even with the loopholes existing, our background check system over the last decade and a half or so has prevented about 2m gun transactions,” said spokesman Josh Earnest on Monday. “That’s 2m guns that were blocked from going into the hands of people who shouldn’t have them.”



And though the package of measures Obama will formally announce on Tuesday is far weaker than the laws he urged Congress to pass after the 2012 Newtown massacre (which was also accompanied by 23 largely ineffectual executive actions), the legal battle over background checks will at least be one he hopes to spare any Democratic successor from having to fight again when he leaves office next January.

