WH finalizing executive order tightening background checks of gun buyers

The Hill notes that gun-rights advocates will likely challenge such a measure on the grounds that Obama lacks the authority to use executive order to tighten background checks.

Last week, a bill which would have expanded background checks for gun purchasers was defeated in the Senate. All four Republican senators who are running for president — Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, Rand Paul, and Marco Rubio — voted against it.

There have been two other developments on the gun front.

• On Thursday, Connecticut governor Dan Malloy said he would sign an executive order which would bar people on the government’s terrorism watch lists from buying guns in Connecticut. The move came ahead of next week’s third anniversary of the shooting of twenty children and six adults at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut.
  The New York Times notes that Connecticut already has some of the strictest gun laws in the country, including measures which were put in place in the wake of the Sandy Hook attack
• In the House, Democrats demand that a 17-year ban on government-funded research into violence involving firearms be ended. On Thursday, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-California) said Democrats will insist that the research ban, the work of former Congressman Jay Dickey (R-Arkansas; served in the house from 1993 to 2001), be rescinded as part of the $1.1 trillion omnibus bill that Congress needs to pass by next week to avoid a government shutdown.
  Dickey has since said he regrets sponsoring the measure, and called for its removal from law.
  “We must insist that we cannot have [an omnibus] bill leave the station that still has that ban on research in it,” Pelosi said. “Our priority is to remove the ban on research on gun violence. Let’s do it today.”
  “This is something that has universal acceptance, so let us take it one step at a time,” she added. “The bill has so many problems, they should welcome this as a gift … It would be the easiest thing in the world for them to take that piece of legislation out of the bill, and then we could find out. Why would we not want data, why would we not want information, so we can make a judgment about how we move forward?
  “This bill today would say to the NRA you no longer have a stranglehold on information, on data, on research, on how we can make the change that is necessary. Once we have the data, we are better prepared to act upon it.”