Congress may react to President Obama’s plans to curb gun violence by doing exactly nothing, in large part because Obama’s action didn’t do anything to change existing law, making it unclear what Congress should do in return.
As soon as President Obama announced plans to take executive action aimed at expanding background checks on gun purchasers, Republicans fired off statements opposing the move and threatening action.
But with few exceptions, the GOP didn’t pledge any specific plans, and most lawmakers promised to study the changes while pledging to uphold the Second Amendment right to gun ownership.
“Congress and the American people have repeatedly said ‘no’ to President Obama’s ineffective policies that would infringe on the Second Amendment,” Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said in a statement. “The House continues to stand for the Constitution and in defense of the American people’s rights.”
Policy experts say the non-specific reaction is due in part to Obama’s executive actions, which didn’t change existing law, and instead stressed that appropriate background checks should be performed for all gun purchases, regardless of where they take place. But that’s already current law, which makes it hard for Congress to respond.
“All the president did was just restate what was in the statue, and court cases have interpreted it,” David Kopel, a policy analyst for the libertarian Cato Institute, told the Washington Examiner. “It’s hard to have a counter measure against nothing.”
Obama’s action does imply a new effort to enforce current gun laws for smaller dealers, but it also implies a need for the hiring of more enforcement officers, something Congress could decide not to approve just by sitting on its hands.
Even the GOP seemed to breathe a small sigh of relief Tuesday after days of anticipation Obama’s proposal, which many believed would include prohibiting those on the notoriously faulty terror watch list from buying weapons.
“The president’s latest proposal,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., acknowledged Tuesday, “does not go as far as originally reported.”
Kopel said Republicans in Congress are more likely to attack a piece of Obama’s action expanding the Social Security Administration. It would let the agency devise a rule to determine who is mentally incompetent, and to require that information to be reported to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, which is used to block gun purchases.
Critics of the move said it could result in the denial of gun ownership to people who are simply unable to manage their Social Security benefits but are not mentally ill.
“This is not an issue that Congress can really avoid,” Kopel said. “I think that is going to get a lot of attention.”
Goodlatte said the House Judiciary Committee would be examining the proposal. “I am concerned that it could impact citizens’ privacy and due process by granting federal bureaucrats more power to take away this right from those it deems incompetent,” he said in a statement.
But with the election year underway, Republicans are limited in legislative avenues to stop Obama. GOP leadership has shied away from spending fights over policy riders as the party strives to show voters they can govern without gridlock.
Their “no more government shutdowns” stance makes it unlikely Republicans will go so far as to pass legislation defunding Obama’s move in the fiscal 2017 appropriations process. “It’s something Congress clearly will not do,” John Malcolm, a constitutional scholar at the conservative Heritage Foundation, told the Examiner.
One GOP appropriator, Rep. John Culberson, of Texas, sent a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch, warning that the House Appropriations Committee “will not provide resources” to the Department of Justice, for “unlawful limitations on the unambiguous Second Amendment rights of Americans.”
Top Republican leaders, however, haven’t promised to use the “power of the purse” to stop the move.
House Majority Whip Steve Scalise pledged to do “everything in my power to block any attempt by this president to restrict our Second Amendment rights,” but he provided no specifics.
Republicans could instead use the judicial branch to try to stop changes they deem illegal.
The GOP has had some success in blocking Obama’s executive actions. A federal court last Fall upheld a House Republican lawsuit over the Obama administration’s payments to heath insurance companies participating in the Obamacare exchanges, for example.
House Republicans could easily pass standalone legislation to stop the executive actions, but the measure would not likely pass the Senate and would be vetoed by the president.
Gun rights groups and red-state lawmakers said they opposed the new proposals.
The NRA, in a statement on Tuesday, warned that Obama’s actions are “ripe for abuse,” and accused him of of political exploitation.
Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Arkansas, said the plan will “blur legal lines and intimidate individuals,” seeking to legally purchase guns.
“Rest assured,” Cotton said, “Congress won’t be ignored and I am committed to protecting your Second Amendment rights.”
