WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama's new executive actions aimed at curbing gun violence in America have been described as many things: life-saving, by gun control advocates; unconstitutional, by critics; dicey, by political observers, who wonder how the chips will fall in the 2016 elections.
One word not used is timely.
For years, advocates have encouraged Obama to take unilateral steps to tighten background checks for gun sales, making it harder for criminals to buy firearms at gun shows or on the Internet. And for years, the administration rebuffed that lobbying, leaving the impression that they either didn't believe they had the legal authority or found the politics too uncomfortable.
Now that the administration has issued guidance to federal agencies to pursue these actions and others, the question is, what took so long?
"You need to ask them. That's certainly the question that we've been asking," said Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. "It's why we've been putting pressure on the president and the administration to take the action they've now taken."
In many respects, Obama's slow-winding path toward the executive actions exemplifies his governing record as a whole: difficulty working with Capitol Hill, caution during election seasons, frustration over the limits of his persuasive powers and, ultimately, a willingness to buck his Republican detractors.
"You know, government is a slow process no matter where it's taking place, whether it's Congress or the White House," said Mark Kelly, who runs the gun safety group Americans for Responsible Solutions with his wife, former Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-Ariz.), who was shot in the head five years ago this week.
"You've got to get a lot of folks on board with this, to support changes like this. I think it's a process that included both [the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives] and the Justice Department and the Vice President's office and our participation and others. That does take some time," he said.
The actions Obama took this week -- strengthening background checks, allocating an additional $500 million for mental health care services, refocusing federal agencies' attention on "smart gun" technology -- stem from the Senate's defeat of the so-called Manchin-Toomey bill to expand background checks in the spring of 2013.
That April day, a visibly angry Obama stood in the Rose Garden with family members of the victims of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, and vowed not to let the issue of gun control find its way into the dustbin. The administration followed up with a batch of gun-related executive actions that year, but couldn't persuade Congress to revisit the bill, even as high-profile mass shootings began to occur on a disturbingly regular basis.
The failed Senate vote sparked debate within the administration. A faction of aides wanted to move quickly on additional executive actions, wary that implementing them would take months if not years.
"[T]here is no reasonable policy or legal rationale for why the administration did not take action two years ago to narrow the gun show loophole," a former White House official told The Huffington Post. "If the president had issued a proposed rule two years ago and made finalizing it a priority, he could easily be announcing today a final rule that would be more effective than guidance."
But that didn't happen and for a variety of reasons. Chief among them was a concern about legality. The president's advisers viewed the law as vague enough to prevent him from trying to implement broad new gun policy unilaterally. The predominant impulse, instead, was to continue to push Congress to act so that any change, even a marginal one, would be more enduring.
After the Sandy Hook shooting, "we went to them with the idea that anything sold at a gun show should be considered a sale with a background check because the gun show itself was a business interaction," said Jim Kessler, a former director of policy and research at Americans for Gun Safety and co-founder of the centrist-Democratic organization Third Way. "I think the feeling was, let's try and get something done by legislation and executive action would be the last resort."
There were major hurdles, though. The biggest was the National Rifle Association's financial grip on lawmakers, many of whom receive thousands of dollars from the lobbying group. Beyond that is the fact that advocates for gun reforms weren't agitating for another Senate vote, fearful that they could wind up losing more support than they gained. And moderate Senate Democrats, several of whom had just voted against Manchin-Toomey, were begging party leaders to take the issue off the docket, worried that it could ruin their chances in a difficult election cycle.
"The people up for election in 2014 uniformly told us not to continue to hammer that issue," said one senior Senate Democratic leadership aide.
Two of the Democratic senators who voted against Manchin-Toomey, Mark Begich of Alaska and Mark Pryor of Arkansas, ended up losing their seats anyway. A third, Max Baucus of Montana, gave up his seat before facing voters. A handful of Democrats who voted for the bill lost too, making the already remote chances of legislative action even more improbable. Gun control was, for the time being, firmly not on anyone's radar.
But then came the summer of 2015. A mass shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, left nine people dead. A shooting in Chattanooga, Tennessee, claimed five victims, and one in Roseburg, Oregon, claimed nine. Senate Democrats started prioritizing the issue again. Being in the minority, they couldn't force a vote, so they began pressuring fellow lawmakers. "We wanted to build up a campaign over the coming months and force something in 2016," one aide said.
Gun violence was firmly back in the news by the time Democrats held their first presidential debate in mid-October. Hillary Clinton surprised onlookers by attacking Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) for his past votes against gun control and legal liability for firearm manufacturers. She went on to propose an executive action that Obama hadn't taken: clarifying what it means for a firearms seller to be "in the business" of selling guns. Clinton's move put the White House on the defensive, forcing officials to explain why Obama hadn't already done what she was proposing. Progressives seized on the divide. Lawmakers wrote to the president urging action.
And then, another shooting. This one, in early December in San Bernardino, California, left 14 dead and 22 wounded. It was the deadliest shooting since Newtown.
Under pressure, administration officials took a look at Clinton's proposal. They didn't mimic it, but they did act on it. Rather than limit the number of guns a person can sell before being classified as running a business, they refined the guidelines to require background checks for people trying to purchase firearms through a trust, corporation or other legal entity. They went a step further, too, by requiring those who ship firearms to notify law enforcement if their firearms are lost or stolen in transit.
"What I can say is that we have looked at this from a number of angles and proposed this guidance in a way that we think is consistent with existing law ... as well as consistent with the Second Amendment," said Attorney General Loretta Lynch. "We wanted to be as careful as we could about that."
Gun control advocates wonder whether all this could have been done sooner and if lives could have been saved in the process. But most don't fault Obama for waiting to act. Given the broad public support for tighter background checks on gun sales, some believed that with patience and a bit of courage in the face of the gun lobby, lawmakers would have eventually come around and passed a bill to close a loophole in the federal background checks law.
"I think in the days and months and years following Newtown, a lot of people, including the president, hoped Congress would act," said Robyn Thomas, executive director of the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.
"He was properly deferring to Congress to do their jobs," she said, but in the end, he "realized the Congress is simply unwilling or unable."
