Obama's Plan to Expand the Scope of Background Checks for Private Gun Sales, Of Course In Defiance of Congress

The law says this about who must conduct a background check on a gun sale: those who are "engaged in the business" of selling guns must perform background checks, and "engaged in the business" is defined like this:

(21) The term “engaged in the business” means--

...

(C) as applied to a dealer in firearms, as defined in section 921(a)(11)(A), a person who devotes time, attention, and labor to dealing in firearms as a regular course of trade or business with the principal objective of livelihood and profit through the repetitive purchase and resale of firearms, but such term shall not include a person who makes occasional sales, exchanges, or purchases of firearms for the enhancement of a personal collection or for a hobby, or who sells all or part of his personal collection of firearms;

Obama's newest unconstitutional exertion of unlawful power is to redefine what "regular course of trade" is, on his own claimed authority, to achieve by illegal dictate what Congress has already refused.

Stymied by Republicans in Congress, President Barack Obama is expected to act alone to take executive action to tighten restrictions on gun sales.

White House adviser Valerie Jarrett, speaking at a vigil last week for victims of the 2012 Newtown, Conn., shooting, confirmed that the president has asked his staff to complete a proposal that would expand background checks on gun sales without congressional approval.

Before Jarrett's public pronouncement, The New York Times and other media have reported the Obama administration's action would broaden the definition of who is considered a high-volume gun dealer, a move that could force background checks for certain sales at gun shows, online, and in other areas that fall outside the law.

He's signaled before that he'll be moving on this in the first couple of weeks of the new year.

Paul Ryan: Obama's Overreach on Presidential Lawmaking Is "Dangerous." Hey, who woke this guy up?

Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, on Monday called President Obama's forthcoming executive action to curb gun violence a "dangerous level of executive overreach."

"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," Ryan said in a statement. "No president should be able to reverse legislative failure by executive fiat, not even incrementally. The American people deserve a president who will respect their constitutional rights - all of them."

posted by Ace at 02:20 PM

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