Making a marginal dent in gun carnage

When it comes to combating the plague of gun carnage that makes the United States a uniquely violent outlier in the developed world, the executive actions on guns announced by President Obama Tuesday bring to mind a 400-pound man who announces he is going on a diet.
He will reduce the number of chocolate brownies he consumes daily from three to one. And he will walk around the block once, or maybe twice if he is really feeling ambitious. But tangy cheese pizza will remain an everyday staple, as will potato chips, soda, ice cream, cheeseburgers and fries.
Cutting down a little bit on the brownies and burning a couple of calories will certainly not hurt anything, and perhaps do this fella some good around the margins. It might bring his weight down to 395 pounds or so, which is certainly better than nothing. But it wouldn’t be the same as determinedly hitting the gym and adopting a diet built around lettuce, cottage cheese and bottled water.
In the same way, the executive actions the president says he will carry out on guns, and for which he does not need approval from a hostile, firearm-enamored Congress, will probably diminish the number of gun injuries and deaths in this country only nominally. The bloodshed is assured to go on and on until a Congress not beholden to the National Rifle Association and its fanatical fellow travelers is seated. But any measures that make our communities a little bit safer and stem the flood of guns on our streets by a drop or two are not something to be shrugged off or taken for granted.
Most of the executive actions announced by Obama Tuesday center on enforcing existing laws, rather than creating new ones – something that opponents of increased gun regulation always say they want. To wit, his administration will crack down on unlicensed gun sellers who peddle their wares at gun shows or online, and present themselves as being hobbyists rather than gun dealers. Obama would also like a more up-to-date system put in place that would allow background checks to be processed around the clock. He wants to double the number of FBI employees who handle bacground checks, and add 200 new agents to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
In addition, Obama is looking to close a loophole that allows individuals to operate under the guise of trusts or corporate entities to buy and sell sawed-off shotguns or machine guns.
All of these are eminently sensible ideas, and Americans broadly support expanded background checks. There is no call for a reduction in magazine capacities, the banning of assault weapons, or even the outlawing of handguns, an idea that was once energetically debated in this country after the murders of public figures like Robert F. Kennedy and John Lennon. An NRA spokeswoman, in fact, conceded that Obama’s executive actions are “simply restating the current law…”
Nevertheless, judging by the rhetoric of some lawmakers and presidential candidates, you would have thought that Obama had blithely ventured to the National Archives in Washington, D.C., and ripped up the Constitution in front of a gaggle of tourists. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, whose Republican presidential bid has lately shown signs of new life, accused Obama of wanting to act “as if he is a dictator,” while the always quotable Donald Trump exclaimed that “pretty soon you won’t be able to get guns.”
Hardly. Even with the president’s executive actions, the United States will still remain one of the most heavily armed nations on the planet. A dose of political will, a different Congress and a different president will be required to change that.