Group gives Obama a to-do list on stopping gun violence

A day after a community college student shot dead his English professor and eight other students in Roseburg, Oregon, President Barack Obama told reporters that he had asked his staff to comb through existing gun laws to see if there might be ways to use them to help prevent the next mass shooting on a school campus.

Everytown For Gun Safety has five suggestions. The New York City-based nonprofit organization released a report on Monday outlining five things the White House can do now that don’t require action from Congress, where gun legislation has faced stubborn gridlock.

While none of the recommendations would likely have prevented the Oregon shooting — in which all the guns used were purchased legally — they represent changes that gun-control advocates say could reduce the number of illegally obtained guns and decrease overall gun violence in the United States. 

"What you want to do is, to the degree you can, is to try and ensure that people who are not legally able to access guns don’t get them," including criminals and people with serious mental illnesses, said Glenn Pierce, a principal research scientist at Northeastern University's College of Criminal Justice who has studied trafficking patterns of guns used to commit violence. This step may not prevent every mass shooting but would improve public safety, Pierce said.

Everytown for Gun Safety's report recommends, first of all, that the president offer further guidance to the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) on exceptions to the Gun-Free School Zones Act, which was signed into law in 1990.

The law bars anyone from bringing loaded or unlocked guns within 1,000 feet of a K-12 school, public or private. There is an exception for people who hold “qualified” state permits allowing them to carry firearms in public, but ATF hasn’t clarified which state permits qualify for the exemption, the report says.

Forty-nine states and the District of Columbia grant permits to carry concealed firearms; more than a dozen grant permits to carry guns openly, and some issue concealed carry permits without doing a background check.

“In the absence of ATF guidance, permits holders are able to carry guns in school zones, when in fact their permit would not qualify for the federal exemption,” the report said. “Consequently, criminals in some states are able to slip through the cracks, get concealed carry permits without a background check, and carry guns in schools.”

The report also urged the White House to tighten regulation of large-volume private gun sellers. Private dealers are unlicensed, meaning that they do not have to run background checks on buyers — a step the dealers can skip only if they make “occasional sales, exchanges or purchases of firearms.” But many of these private sellers are engaged in the business of selling guns — often online or at gun shows, and sometimes in large quantities, the report said. It recommended that ATF come up with a clearer definition of what constitutes a gun-selling business, in order to stop people from using private dealers to buy guns without a background check. 

Among the report’s other recommendations were to investigate or arrest people who fail background checks when they attempt to buy a gun, because they aren’t allowed to — either because they are domestic abusers, have committed certain types of crimes or have been involuntarily committed to mental health treatment.

The report also called for the Obama administration to help states better enforce existing background check laws, and to clarify the law barring domestic abusers from buying guns to include people involved in unmarried relationships.

"Everytown is absolutely correct that there are a lot of people who are selling a lot of guns, bringing in a lot of money and not having the license to sell," said Daniel Webster, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research. "That has to be having a measurable impact on public safety in a detrimental way, and should be fixed."

Even if Obama were to follow every one of these recommendations, Congress could still do more, said John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety. “There has been significant progress at the state level and we know the president is serious about taking action," he said in a statement. "But Congress must step up too and do its part to prevent gun violence. American lives are on the line.”