President Barack Obama said Wednesday he will take these actions by Executive Order:
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 rulemaking 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 the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and Explosives (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 an ATF director.
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 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 asking their patients about guns in their homes.
17. Release a letter to healthcare 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 Affordable Care Act exchanges.
22. Commit to finalizing mental-health parity regulations.
23. Launch a national dialogue led by Secretaries Sebelius and Duncan on mental health.
Some make sense, most either don't or should be being enforced as part of existing law(s).
On the Doctors reporting gun information gleaned from their patients, there's parts of that that I agree with and have advocated in past threads. (articles 16, 17, 20, 21, 22, and 23) BUT, all but 22 and 23 are in direct conflict with the HIPPIA Law on Patient's Information disclosure . . Thus, when your doctor asks you about your guns (or anyone else's), you may tell him that, one) it's none of his business, and two), if you told him, he couldn't, by law, tell anyone else.
But, for Congress to "Outlaw" a particular type of gun, especially after they have been legally obtainable for 45 years, and in the latest buying rush, probably put another 25 to 50 thousand of them into households and collections, is totally stoopid (with two 'O's) simply because once they're out there, they cannot be "Controlled" . . No more than Meth or Heroin . . And private sellers are not going to be bothered by running "Background Checks" on someone they're selling a gun to. It's nothing more than a finger in the dike.
Even more stupidly, the Liberals make a fuss over the killing of the few by "Assault Weapons" when the major villian in the homocide rate in the USA is the stolen handgun . . Which takes me full circle to my recommendation of creating mandatory sentencing laws for possession of stolen guns . . We didn't see (or hear) anything about that in either his list or his speech . .