President Obama is going to surround himself with children when he announces his gun control plans today, making it clear who legislators should keep in mind when they decide whether they will support him —and obviously not passing up an opportunity to go for the emotional jugular.
By highlighting children, Obama is signaling that he is willing to stop at nothing in his effort to get serious gun reform passed. The president is telling the opposition that he will use every single tool in his toolbox to get what he wants.
“I can tell you that tomorrow the president and vice president will hold an event here at the White House to unveil a package of concrete proposals to reduce gun violence and prevent future tragedies like the one in Newtown, Connecticut,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said yesterday. “They will be joined by children from around the country who wrote the president letters in the wake of that tragedy, expressing their concerns about gun violence and school safety along with their parents.”
A Maryland 8-year-old named Grant wrote to the president: “It’s a free country but I recommend there needs (to) be a limit with guns. Please don’t let people own machine guns or other powerful guns like that.”
From conversations with the White House and Vice President Joe Biden, head of the gun control task force, legislators expect Obama to announce today that he wants another assault weapons ban and a ban on high-capacity magazines. He also wants to close loopholes that allow people to buy weapons at gun shows and online without background checks, and to make it harder for the mentally ill to get their hands on guns. He seeks more training for school personnel to stop bullying, and more funding for school counselors.
In addition, the president will order federal agencies to conduct more research on gun use and crimes — something that the National Rifle Association has been able to limit up until now.
When the Biden task force started its work a week ago, the vice president mentioned that there were some measures the president would be able to undertake by using executive action, bypassing congressional opposition.
According to a lobbyist who was briefed on the recommendations and spoke to The Huffington Post, Biden presented 19 measures the president could start right away with executive action. But sources say that the majority of the president’s attention today will be focused on the measures that he wants to get through Congress.
There were some indications last week, based on White House sources, that the president might shy away from pushing for tough measures like an assault weapons ban, not wanting to waste too much political capital before upcoming fights on the debt ceiling and immigration reform.
However, it now appears that Obama won’t be backing off from another assault weapons and high-capacity magazine ban.
Congress passed such a ban in 1994 during the Clinton administration — helped considerably by the efforts of Joe Biden when he was a Delaware senator — but in 2004, during the Bush administration, it was allowed to expire.
If Obama is willing to use children to make his point today, the NRA is also trying to fight back with children — namely the president’s daughters, Malia and Sasha. In a new commercial, the lobbying group calls Obama a “elitist hypocrite” because he is skeptical of putting armed guards in every school in America, but has armed protection for his children.
“At some point the NRA’s Washington lobbyists may realize that this kind of thing is making them irrelevant,” Mark Glaze, director of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, told TalkingPointsMemo on Tuesday night. “It does nothing but offend the reasonable people who make up the bulk of their country — and the bulk of their own membership.”
As for the NRA’s suggestion about Malia and Sasha, Glaze said, “I’m guessing Sasha and Malia would be delighted not to have security, but their dad happens to be president.”
