President Barack Obama announced two executive actions to reduce gun violence this week, according to a press release from the White House . Amongst these actions, Obama will notably restrict the re-entry of American firearms into the states after the government or other commercial entities have sold them overseas.
In a related move, the executive government will ban trusts and corporations from purchasing heavy-duty firepower such as machine guns and short-barreled shotguns without a background check. According to the White House, felons, domestic abusers and others prohibited from having guns have been using trusts and corporations as alternate identities to get their hands on the dangerous weapons. According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), there were 39,000 requested registered by trusts and corporations for such weapons last year.
These executive actions represent an attempt by the President to work around limits imposed upon gun control by the right-leaning House of Representatives. Earlier this year, the president attempted to pass a bill that would increase background checks, limit magazine capacity and add mental health provisions to gun owners in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary school shootings in Newtown, Connecticut that left 27 dead, including 20 elementary school students.
Vice President Joe Biden also spoke at the swearing-in ceremony of new ATF director Todd Jones, calling the administration's gun control proposals the "best way to reduce gun violence" and urging the legislature to act.
As for the lax regulations overseas; according to the Los Angeles Times, that's a double-edged sword hurting America's southerly neighbors as well. According to the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations, more than 70 percent of the 99,000 firearms recovered by Mexican law enforcement since 2007 was U.S. manufactured. A 2011 report from the U.N. suggests that firearm-related homicide has tripled in the last decade.
The United States has the largest rate of gun ownership in the world; in 2009, the Congressional Research Service concluded there were 310 million firearms in the United States, excluding the military. That year, the Census bureau put the population of the United States at 305.5 million.