PA Bill Number: HB2235
Title: Providing for regulation of the meat packing and food processing industry by creating facility health and safety committees in the workplace; ...
Description: Providing for regulation of the meat packing and food processing industry by creating facility health and safety committees in the workplace; ... ...
Last Action: Referred to LABOR AND INDUSTRY
Last Action Date: Apr 25, 2024
Obama meeting with AG on gun control actions, faces GOP backlash :: 01/04/2016
President Obama is sitting down Monday with top law enforcement officials to review and finalize new executive actions aimed at tightening the country’s gun laws – a push that Republicans on Capitol Hill and the campaign trail are calling a “dangerous” overreach.
The president lit a fire under the gun control debate last week when he and his aides announced White House plans to kick off the new year with executive action on gun rules. Obama plans to meet Monday afternoon with Attorney General Loretta Lynch, FBI Director James Comey and other top officials to work out those plans.
At the top of the list is an effort to expand background checks on gun sales by forcing more sellers to register as federally licensed gun dealers. The changes would be aimed at some unregistered sellers who skirt the background check laws by selling at gun shows, online or informal settings. Other moves being considered include improving reporting of lost and stolen weapons and beefing up inspections of licensed dealers, according to a person familiar with the plans.
The package includes measures this White House has long considered but not completed, mindful of the legal fight sure to follow as well as the potential for political backlash for some fellow Democrats.
Ahead of the meeting, Republicans made clear they would fight the administration and accused the president of overstepping.
"While we don’t yet know the details of the plan, the president is at minimum subverting the legislative branch, and potentially overturning its will,” House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said in a statement. “This is a dangerous level of executive overreach, and the country will not stand for it.”
Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump vowed to reverse any such actions if he’s elected.
"We're not changing the Second Amendment," Trump said Saturday at a campaign rally in Biloxi, Miss. "I will veto that. I will un-sign that so fast."
But supporters of stronger action on gun control applauded the president’s new push.
"We definitely think there are things he can do," said Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, which advocates for expanding background checks. Gross says his recent conversations with White House aides have left him hopeful.
"It's very clear that the White House is feeling emboldened," he said.
Obama announced the meeting with Lynch in his weekly address from his Hawaii holiday vacation. On Thursday, he'll take his argument to prime time, participating in a town hall discussion of gun violence on CNN. He's slated to make his case for changes in his State of the Union address on Jan. 12.
The high-profile rollout reflects a White House continuing to look for ways to wrap up unfinished business, despite an uncooperative Congress.
After all but ignoring the issue in his first term, Obama changed course after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in December 2012. Nevertheless, the president failed to push a package of gun measures through Congress, including one expanding background checks.
At the same time, Obama took nearly two dozen executive actions to tighten gun laws, but left a major expansion of background checks out of the mix.
But after the shooting at a community college in Roseburg, Oregon in October, Obama ordered his staff to redouble the effort to look for ways to work around Congress.
Under current law, federally licensed firearms dealers are required to seek background checks on potential firearm purchasers. But advocacy groups say many sellers are currently exempt from having to register, increasing the chance of sales to customers prohibited by law from purchasing a gun.
The administration is expected to reclassify some of those dealers using a mix of criteria, such as the number and frequency of guns sold, whether sellers profit off sales, whether they advertise, rent space or tables at gun shows and pay taxes.
