Category Archives: Legislation

More Lawsuits Filed Against Obama

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Legislation has been introduced to fix the stonewalling of FOIA requests by the Obama administration. That text is found here.

Introduced in House (02/02/2015)

FOIA Oversight and Implementation Act of 2015 or the FOIA Act

This bill makes changes to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to provide the public with greater access to information disclosable under such Act.

The bill requires agencies, in administering FOIA, to: (1) make information disclosable under such Act available to the public in an electronic, publicly accessible format; and (2) make available to the public records of general interest that inform the public of the operations and activities of the government or that have been requested three or more times.

The Office of Management and Budget is directed to ensure the operation of an online request portal that allows a member of the public to submit a FOIA request for records to any agency from a single website.

The bill establishes a presumption of openness by prohibiting an agency from withholding information otherwise disclosable under FOIA unless: (1) the agency reasonably foresees that disclosure would cause specific identifiable harm to an interest protected by an exemption to FOIA, or (2) disclosure is prohibited by law.

The duties of the Office of Government Information Services (OGIS) are expanded to require: (1) mediation services to resolve disputes between agencies and persons making FOIA requests; (2) annual reports on the activities of OGIS that are available in an electronic, publicly accessible format; and (3) annual public meetings on the review of agencies’ FOIA policies, procedures, and compliance.

The bill requires annual agency FOIA reports and the annual reports on FOIA of the Attorney General and the Director of the Office of Information Policy (OIP) to be made available in an electronic, publicly accessible format.

Agencies are prohibited from assessing search or duplication fees if they have failed to comply with a statutory deadline for a FOIA response and did not submit a written notice to the requestor justifying the fees requested.

The role of the Chief FOIA Officer at each agency is expanded to require officers to serve as the primary agency liaison between OGIS and OIP and to complete annual compliance determinations that review agency regulations, fee assessments, use of exemptions, dispute resolution services, and the timely processing of FOIA requests.

The bill establishes a Chief FOIA Officers Council for developing recommendations for increasing compliance and efficiency, disseminating information about agency experiences, identifying initiatives to increase transparency and compliance, and promoting performance measures to ensure agency compliance with FOIA requirements.

The Inspector General of each agency is required to: (1) periodically review compliance with FOIA requirements, including the timely processing of requests, assessment of fees and fee waivers, and the use of FOIA exemptions, and (2) make recommendations to the agency head, including recommendations for disciplinary action.

Record Number of FOIA Lawsuits Filed Against Obama

DailyCaller: Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) complaints filed in federal court have skyrocketed under President Barack Obama despite his promise to have “the most transparent administration ever,” according to a comprehensive analysis by a Syracuse University research unit.

A total of 498 FOIA lawsuits were filed in 2015, the highest number since 2001, the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse study made public Wednesday. The 421 suits filed in 2014 previously held the highest annual total.

The most recent two-year total represents a 54 percent increase over the total of 595 FOIA lawsuits filed in 2009 and 2010. See the accompanying chart below.

 

FOIA Lawsuits by TRAC

The FOIA requires federal departments and agencies to make available requests of all official documents, not covered by a handful of exemptions such as for law enforcement, privacy and protection of commercial secrets. When requested documents aren’t made available as required by law, requestors often go to federal court seeking a judicial order to compel production.

“The 919 FOIA cases filed in the period fiscal year 2014 – 2015 also far outnumber those filed during the last two years of the previous Bush administration. There were only 562 such matters filed during fiscal year 2007 – 2008, yielding a 64 percent increase for the most recent period,” TRAC said announcing the results of its analysis.

The Syracuse University research unit was founded by former New York Times investigative reporter David Burnham in 1989.

A total of 2,609 FOIA lawsuits were filed during Obama’s administration from 2009 to 2015, compared to 2,091 filed during the Bush administration from 2002 through 2008. The highest annual total of the Bush years was 387 in 2005.

“This is the most transparent administration in history,” Obama said in 2013 during a Google Plus Fireside Chat. “I can document that this is the case. Every visitor that comes into the White House is now part of the public record. Every law we pass and every rule we implement we put online for everyone to see.”

Obama did begin posting information to the Internet about White House visitors but only after a lawsuit was filed by the nonprofit government watchdog Judicial Watch.

Critics have frequently reminded Obama of his transparency claim, a fact TRAC noted, “the administration’s record has been a contentious matter ever since President Obama’s first days in office, when both he and Attorney General Eric Holder made sweeping claims about the ambitious FOIA policies they would follow in the years ahead.”

“In a short memorandum to the heads of all Executive Branch departments and agencies, the president said the Freedom of Information Act ‘should be administered with a clear presumption: in the face of doubt, openness prevails.’”

TRAC also cautioned, however, that an increase in the number of FOIA lawsuits being filed isn’t necessarily an indicator of less government transparency during a particular presidential administration.

“Because of possible changes in public attitudes about the public’s right to obtain government records, its willingness to challenge government’s failure to provide transparency, as well as changes in the Freedom of Information law and case law, the increase in federal FOIA court filings does not necessarily mean that the current administration is more or less secretive than those of the past,” TRAC said.

“But the rising counts well may indicate that this administration has not lived up to the ambitious open government promises made when President Obama first came to the White House,” TRAC said.

 

 

Your Threat Score, Yup, Yours

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The new way police are surveilling you: Calculating your threat ‘score’

FRESNO, Calif. — While officers raced to a recent 911 call about a man threatening his ex-girlfriend, a police operator in headquarters consulted software that scored the suspect’s potential for violence the way a bank might run a credit report.

The program scoured billions of data points, including arrest reports, property records, commercial databases, deep Web searches and the man’s social- media postings. It calculated his threat level as the highest of three color-coded scores: a bright red warning.

The man had a firearm conviction and gang associations, so out of caution police called a negotiator. The suspect surrendered, and police said the intelligence helped them make the right call — it turned out he had a gun.

As a national debate has played out over mass surveillance by the National Security Agency, a new generation of technology such as the Beware software being used in Fresno has given local law enforcement officers unprecedented power to peer into the lives of citizens.

Police officials say such tools can provide critical information that can help uncover terrorists or thwart mass shootings, ensure the safety of officers and the public, find suspects, and crack open cases. They say that last year’s attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif., have only underscored the need for such measures.

But the powerful systems also have become flash points for civil libertarians and activists, who say they represent a troubling intrusion on privacy, have been deployed with little public oversight and have potential for abuse or error. Some say laws are needed to protect the public.

In many instances, people have been unaware that the police around them are sweeping up information, and that has spawned controversy. Planes outfitted with cameras filmed protests and unrest in Baltimore and Ferguson, Mo. For years, dozens of departments used devices that can hoover up all cellphone data in an area without search warrants. Authorities in Oregon are facing a federal probe after using social media-monitoring software to keep tabs on Black Lives Matter hashtags.

“This is something that’s been building since September 11,” said Jennifer Lynch, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “First funding went to the military to develop this technology, and now it has come back to domestic law enforcement. It’s the perfect storm of cheaper and easier-to-use technologies and money from state and federal governments to purchase it.”

Few departments will discuss how — or sometimes if — they are using these tools, but the Fresno police offered a rare glimpse inside a cutting-edge $600,000 nerve center, even as a debate raged in the city over its technology.

An arsenal of high-tech tools

Fresno’s Real Time Crime Center is the type of facility that has become the model for high-tech policing nationwide. Similar centers have opened in New York, Houston and Seattle over the past decade.

Fresno’s futuristic control room, which operates around the clock, sits deep in its headquarters and brings together a handful of technologies that allow the department to see, analyze and respond to incidents as they unfold across this city of more than 500,000 in the San Joaquin Valley.

On a recent Monday afternoon, the center was a hive of activity. The police radio crackled over loudspeakers — “subject armed with steel rod” — as five operators sat behind banks of screens dialing up a wealth of information to help units respond to the more than 1,200 911 calls the department receives every day.

On 57 monitors that cover the walls of the center, operators zoomed and panned an array of roughly 200 police cameras perched across the city. They could dial up 800 more feeds from the city’s schools and traffic cameras, and they soon hope to add 400 more streams from cameras worn on officers’ bodies and from thousands from local businesses that have surveillance systems.

The cameras were only one tool at the ready. Officers could trawl a private database that has recorded more than 2 billion scans of vehicle licenses plates and locations nationwide. If gunshots were fired, a system called ShotSpotter could triangulate the location using microphones strung around the city. Another program, called Media Sonar, crawled social media looking for illicit activity. Police used it to monitor individuals, threats to schools and hashtags related to gangs.

Fresno police said having the ability to access all that information in real time is crucial to solving crimes.

They recently used the cameras to track a robbery suspect as he fled a business and then jumped into a canal to hide. He was quickly apprehended.

The license plate database was instrumental in solving a September murder case, in which police had a description of a suspect’s vehicle and three numbers from the license plate.

But perhaps the most controversial and revealing technology is the threat-scoring software Beware. Fresno is one of the first departments in the nation to test the program.

As officers respond to calls, Beware automatically runs the address. The searches return the names of residents and scans them against a range of publicly available data to generate a color-coded threat level for each person or address: green, yellow or red.

Exactly how Beware calculates threat scores is something that its maker, Intrado, considers a trade secret, so it is unclear how much weight is given to a misdemeanor, felony or threatening comment on Facebook. However, the program flags issues and provides a report to the user.

In promotional materials, Intrado writes that Beware could reveal that the resident of a particular address was a war veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, had criminal convictions for assault and had posted worrisome messages about his battle experiences on social media. The “big data” that has transformed marketing and other industries has now come to law enforcement.

Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer said officers are often working on scant or even inaccurate information when they respond to calls, so Beware and the Real Time Crime Center give them a sense of what may be behind the next door.

“Our officers are expected to know the unknown and see the unseen,” Dyer said. “They are making split-second decisions based on limited facts. The more you can provide in terms of intelligence and video, the more safely you can respond to calls.”

But some in Fresno say the power and the sheer concentration of surveillance in the Real Time Crime Center is troubling. The concerns have been raised elsewhere as well — last year, Oakland city officials scaled back plans for such a center after residents protested, citing privacy concerns.

Rob Nabarro, a Fresno civil rights lawyer, said he is particularly concerned about Beware. He said outsourcing decisions about the threat posed by an individual to software is a problem waiting to happen.

Nabarro said the fact that only Intrado — not the police or the public — knows how Beware tallies its scores is disconcerting. He also worries that the system might mistakenly increase someone’s threat level by misinterpreting innocuous activity on social media, like criticizing the police, and trigger a heavier response by officers.

“It’s a very unrefined, gross technique,” Nabarro said of Beware’s color-coded levels. “A police call is something that can be very dangerous for a citizen.”

Dyer said such concerns are overblown, saying the scores don’t trigger a particular police response. He said operators use them as guides to delve more deeply into someone’s background, looking for information that might be relevant to an officer on scene. He said officers on the street never see the scores.

Still, Nabarro is not the only one worried.

The Fresno City Council called a hearing on Beware in November after constituents raised concerns. Once council member referred to a local media report saying that a woman’s threat level was elevated because she was tweeting about a card game titled “Rage,” which could be a keyword in Beware’s assessment of social media.

Councilman Clinton J. Olivier, a libertarian-leaning Republican, said Beware was like something out of a dystopian science fiction novel and asked Dyer a simple question: “Could you run my threat level now?”

Dyer agreed. The scan returned Olivier as a green, but his home came back as a yellow, possibly because of someone who previously lived at his address, a police official said.

“Even though it’s not me that’s the yellow guy, your officers are going to treat whoever comes out of that house in his boxer shorts as the yellow guy,” Olivier said. “That may not be fair to me.”

He added later: “[Beware] has failed right here with a council member as the example.”

An Intrado representative responded to an interview request seeking more information about how Beware works by sending a short statement. It read in part: “Beware works to quickly provide [officers] with commercially available, public information that may be relevant to the situation and may give them a greater level of awareness.”

Calls for ‘meaningful debate’

Similar debates over police surveillance have been playing out across the country, as new technologies have proliferated and law enforcement use has exploded.

The number of local police departments that employ some type of technological surveillance increased from 20 percent in 1997 to more than 90 percent in 2013, according to the latest information from the Bureau of Justice Statistics. The most common forms of surveillance are cameras and automated license plate readers, but the use of handheld biometric scanners, social media monitoring software, devices that collect cellphone data and drones is increasing.

Locally, the American Civil Liberties Union reports that police in the District, Baltimore, and Montgomery and Fairfax counties have cellphone-data collectors, called cell site simulators or StingRays. D.C. police are also using ShotSpotter and license plate readers.

The surveillance creates vast amounts of data, which is increasingly pooled in local, regional and national databases. The largest such project is the FBI’s $1 billion Next Generation Identification project, which is creating a trove of fingerprints, iris scans, data from facial recognition software and other sources that aid local departments in identifying suspects.

Law enforcement officials say such tools allow them to do more with less, and they have credited the technology with providing breaks in many cases. Virginia State Police found the man who killed a TV news crew during a live broadcast last year after his license plate was captured by a reader.

Cell site simulators, which mimic a cellphone tower and scoop up data on all cellphones in an area, have been instrumental in finding kidnappers, fugitives and people who are suicidal, law enforcement officials said.

But those benefits have sometimes come with a cost to privacy. Law enforcement used cell site simulators for years without getting a judge’s explicit consent. But following criticism by the ACLU and other groups, the Justice Department announced last September that it would require all federal agencies to get a search warrant.

The fact that public discussion of surveillance technologies is occurring after they are in use is backward, said Matt Cagle, an attorney for the ACLU of Northern California.

“We think that whenever these surveillance technologies are on the table, there needs to be a meaningful debate,” Cagle said. “There needs to be safeguards and oversight.”

After the contentious hearing before the Fresno City Council on Beware, Dyer said he now wants to make changes to address residents’ concerns. The police chief said he is working with Intrado to turn off Beware’s color-coded rating system and possibly the social media monitoring.

“There’s a balancing act,” Dyer said.

Who’s Calling the Shots in State Politics?

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Exactly what else do voters need to be aware of? Who is winning the liberal-progressive agendas at the state level? Do you pay attention to the language on ballot initiatives? Do you know the background and the money and players behind them?

Read on….

National liberal groups to push ‘record’ number of 2016 ballot measures

Efforts to circumvent legislative logjam counter grassroots origins

PublicIntegrity: Paul Spencer, a teacher and part-time pecan farmer in Arkansas, drafted a ballot measure for 2016 to reform the state’s campaign finance laws so his fellow voters could know who paid for election ads on TV.

But he and fellow activists there knew they couldn’t do it alone. They sought the help of national election-reform groups because in Arkansas, as in many other states, initiatives can cost millions of dollars to pass.

Liberal groups working at the national level are using state ballot initiatives as their weapon of choice for 2016, but given the costs, they’re carefully planning exactly where to push these measures. And Spencer’s Arkansas proposal didn’t make the cut for 2016.

That top-down approach seems ironic. The initiative process was put in place at the beginning of the 20th century as a way for local citizens such as Spencer to band together to pass laws. And voters on the ground may not be aware that national groups are helping fuel the ballot fights in their backyards.

Still, national liberal leaders see state ballot measures as their best option for winning on some issues. Dismayed at their prospects in Congress and in Republican-dominated state legislatures, national liberal groups plan to use ballot initiatives to push raising the minimum wage in Maine, legalizing marijuana in Massachusetts, closing gun sale loopholes in Nevada, guarding endangered species in Oregon — and other campaigns in at least eight additional states.

National conservative groups, meanwhile, seem poised to play defense, setting up a battle of outsiders on state playing fields. In March, Republican-linked politicos launched the Center for Conservative Initiatives in Washington, D.C., to counter the liberal ballot measures they anticipate will arrive in record numbers nationwide in 2016.

“Liberal groups have been forced to spend heavily on ballot initiatives in an effort to circumvent elected representatives because in states around the country the public has overwhelmingly rejected their out-of-touch candidates and messages,” said the Center’s leader, Matt Walter, in an email.

The push from outsiders to pass pet policies via the ballot has occurred before, on everything from land conservation in North Dakota to how to cage chickens in California, sometimes leading to big-money fights between corporations, advocacy groups and others.

“There’s this perception out there that the initiative process is all about the little guy,” said Jennie Bowser, a consultant who for many years studied ballot measures for the bipartisan National Conference of State Legislatures. “But the truth of the matter is that it’s a big business. It’s really well organized, and it’s really well funded. And it is very, very rarely a group of local citizens who get together and try to make a difference.”

Passing popular ideas

In 2014, when a Republican wave gave conservatives more U.S. Senate seats and governors’ mansions, left-leaning activists still managed to notch victories for the minimum wage, gun control and marijuana legalization through ballot measures in Nebraska, South Dakota, Illinois, Arkansas, Washington, Oregon, Alaska and the District of Columbia.

In 2015, they followed with wins for campaign-finance reform in Seattle and Maine.

Those successes, as well as the chance to draw more left-leaning voters to the polls, are encouraging liberal activists to push hard on the 2016 ballot.

 

Saudis and the DC Powerbrokers, Millions $$

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Ah, you have a call holding on line 5, insider information incoming for the next committee meeting or the next paragraph of legislation to be tucked into that bill.

Oh interesting mail here, so buy this stock at this strike price, hold it for 9 days and bail.

Hey Nancy, are you going to the Piper party in Georgetown, great see you there lots to discuss over martinis.

Harry, new nugget coming from K Street, make sure you say this on the Senate floor.

Podesta Group = John and Tony Podesta (John Podesta is Hillary’s campaign architect)

DLA Piper = Law Firm found in 30 countries and was a large contributor the re-election of Barack Obama and is the 5th largest donor to Hillary’s current presidential campaign

Targeted Victory = A digital strategy firm whose founder Zac Moffatt was the director for Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign

Qorvis/MSL Group = A DC based Public Relations/Crisis Management organization that was hired by the FDA, Palestinian American Chamber of Commerce and even Yemen

Pillsbury Winthrop = Law firm that concentrates on mergers and acquisition for corporations and Middle East interests including Abu Dhabi and did sizeable work for arguing habeas corpus rights for Gitmo detainees

Hogan Lovells = Law firm with global offices with concentration in media, litigation and First Amendment law. Oldest law firm in DC, origins in the UK with early cases on treasury issues

Now you may begin to understand connections, donors, cocktail parties and who else is taking up the time daily of those in Congress. Now comes Saudi Arabia:

Washington’s Multi-Million-Dollar Saudi PR Machine

Public image isn’t something one can always control, but Saudi Arabia is spending millions of dollars on Washington lobbyists and PR firms to improve the Kingdom’s reputation in the West. The execution of Shiite leader Sheik Nimr Baqr al-Nimr, followed by an attack on the Saudi embassy in Tehran and the Kingdom’s severing of diplomatic relations with Iran, would seem to offer few upsides for the Saudi government. Riyadh’s behavior comes across as a desperate Hail-Mary pass to isolate Iran at the expense of regional efforts to negotiate a de-escalation of the Syrian civil war and defeat the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.

Jim Lobe pointed out that Washington’s neoconservatives have jumped to Riyadh’s defense, apparently subscribing to the philosophy that “the enemy of my Iranian enemy is my friend.” But, as The New York Times editorial board wrote on Monday, “The execution of the popular Shiite cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr and 46 other prisoners on Saturday was about the worst way Saudi Arabia could have started what promises to be a grim and tumultuous year in the kingdom and across the Middle East.”

The Times may be stating the obvious, but Saudi Arabia pays millions of dollars per year to American public relations firms to paint the Kingdom in the most positive light. These firms have their work cut out for them. Indeed, that PR machine is doing all it can to spin the Saudis’ execution of a political dissident and blatant effort to fan sectarian tensions as somehow the fault of anyone but Saudi Arabia.

Defending the Kingdom

Fahad Nazer, a non-resident fellow at the Saudi- and UAE-funded Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, was quoted in Politico defending the executions, saying, “The primary message appears to be aimed at Saudi Arabia’s own militants, regardless of their sect.” And the Times published a quote from Saudi commentator Salman al-Ansari, who “accused Sheikh Nimr, who was in his mid-50s, of organizing a ‘terrorist network’ in Shiite areas in eastern Saudi Arabia and compared him to a Qaeda ideologue who sanctioned the killing of security forces.” The Podesta Group, a public relations firm hired by the Saudi government, provided Ansari.

So, how much money is in it for the PR professionals who are burning the midnight oil to put a positive spin on Saudi Arabia’s decision to start the year with a mass execution of 47 prisoners? Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) filings submitted by Saudi government contractors in Washington reveal an expensive PR operation.

Firms listed as “active foreign principals for Saudi Arabia” on the FARA website include: DLA Piper, Targeted Victory, Qorvis/MSLGroup, Pillsbury Winthrop, Hogan Lovells, and the Podesta Group. Qorvis/MSLGroup appears to the biggest recipient of Saudi money. Their FARA filings reveal what appears to be a $240,000 per month retainer with the Kingdom for services described as:

Drafted and/or distributed news releases, weekly newsletters, fact sheets and/or speeches to promote Saudi Arabia, its commitment towards counterterrorism, peace in the Middle East, and other issues pertinent to the Kingdom.

Qorvis/MSLGroup also reports it “created a Twitter account for a senior Saudi official,” and “managed a website on Operation Renewal of Hope,” Saudi Arabia’s 10-month-old military intervention in Yemen. Moreover, it farms out $55,000 per month of work from the Saudi account to Targeted Victory, LLC, a digital consulting firm.

The Podesta Group received $200,000 from the “The Center for Studies and Media Affairs at the Saudi Royal Court” for approximately one month of “public relations services” from August to September. The Podesta Group, cited in the Times as working for the Saudi government, is listed as an “active” foreign agent for Saudi Arabia on the FARA website, suggesting that the contract is ongoing.

For services that include advising the Saudi government on “media reports and related public affairs developments” and undertaking “specific advocacy assignments with regard to litigation, legislative, regulatory, public policy or public affairs matters, and/or in other activities,” Hogan Lovells receives $60,000 per month in fees.

DLA Piper receives a fee of $50,000 per month for services including “[contacting] Members of Congress, congressional staff and Executive Branch officials in connection with strengthening the ability of the United States and Saudi Arabia to advance mutual national security interests.”

Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP collects a fee of $15,000 per month for “legal and non-legal services to Saudi Arabia in conjunction with information gather on U.S. Middle East policy.”

Assuming that these contracts are ongoing, as the FARA site indicates, and the Targeted Victory LLC fees were already included in the Qorvis/MSLGroup fees, Saudi Arabia is spending $565,000 per month for its lobbying operations in Washington, not including expenses. That’s $6.78 million per year in fees for PR, lobbying, and legal representation in the U.S. capitol.

Who Else Benefits?

Saudi Arabia is certainly a prize catch for K Street firms looking for hefty monthly retainers from foreign clients. But the U.S. military-industrial complex rakes in the biggest profits from the country currently fanning the flames of sectarian conflict in the Middle East.

Saudi Arabia is looking to complete a $1.29 billion purchase of U.S. weapons, in part to replenish bombs and missiles used in Yemen. Reuters reports that a $11.25 billion purchase of Lockheed Martin warships is also expected to move forward, according to “military and industry sources.” The Congressional Research Service reports that Saudi Arabia topped the list of arms transfer recipients among developing nations from 2007 to 2014 with $86 billion in agreements, giving US defense contractors ample incentive to lend their own lobbying and PR firepower to the Kingdom’s efforts to manage public opinion.

“The tangled and volatile realities of the Middle East do not give the United States or the European Union the luxury of choosing or rejecting allies on moral criteria,” the Times editorial concluded, but that “cannot mean condoning actions that blatantly fan sectarian hatreds, undermine efforts at stabilizing the region and crudely violate human rights.”

Saudi Arabia’s extensive contracts with Washington’s biggest PR firms—and the additional PR help it gets from U.S. defense contractors—are designed to make those actions somehow palatable inside the Beltway. But in the end they will only make the White House’s efforts to navigate the Sunni-Shia divide all the more difficult.

 

 

 

 

Obama’s Gun Control Executive ‘Action’ Detail

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Of particular note: Executive Orders are subject to legal/judicial review while Executive Actions are not. Action is treated as agency edits.  Obama has asked for big money for this gun control agenda of which Congress will not allocated. To gain the dollars, Obama will have to yet issue another edit re-assigning money around agencies.

President Obama will announce tomorrow his plan to bypass Congress to move on gun control, through Executive Action. The Administration has released a “Fact Sheet.”

The following publication was released by The White House: Gun violence has taken a heartbreaking toll on too many communities across the country. Over the past decade in America, more than 100,000 people have been killed as a result of gun violence—and millions more have been the victim of assaults, robberies, and other crimes involving a gun. Many of these crimes were committed by people who never should have been able to purchase a gun in the first place. Over the same period, hundreds of thousands of other people in our communities committed suicide with a gun and nearly half a million people suffered other gun injuries. Hundreds of law enforcement officers have been shot to death protecting their communities. And too many children are killed or injured by firearms every year, often by accident. The vast majority of Americans—including the vast majority of gun owners—believe we must take sensible steps to address these horrible tragedies.

The President and Vice President are committed to using every tool at the Administration’s disposal to reduce gun violence. Some of the gaps in our country’s gun laws can only be fixed through legislation, which is why the President continues to call on Congress to pass the kind of commonsense gun safety reforms supported by a majority of the American people. And while Congress has repeatedly failed to take action and pass laws that would expand background checks and reduce gun violence, today, building on the significant steps that have already been taken over the past several years, the Administration is announcing a series of commonsense executive actions designed to:

1. Keep guns out of the wrong hands through background checks.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is making clear that it doesn’t matter where you conduct your business—from a store, at gun shows, or over the Internet: If you’re in the business of selling firearms, you must get a license and conduct background checks.

ATF is finalizing a rule to require background checks for people trying to buy some of the most dangerous weapons and other items through a trust, corporation, or other legal entity.

Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch has sent a letter to States highlighting the importance of receiving complete criminal history.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is overhauling the background check system to make it more effective and efficient. The envisioned improvements include processing background checks 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and improving notification of local authorities when certain prohibited persons unlawfully attempt to buy a gun. The FBI will hire more than 230 additional examiners and other staff to help process these background checks.

2. Make our communities safer from gun violence.

The Attorney General convened a call with U.S. Attorneys around the country to direct federal prosecutors to continue to focus on smart and effective enforcement of our gun laws.

The President’s FY2017 budget will include funding for 200 new ATF agents and investigators to help enforce our gun laws.

ATF has established an Internet Investigation Center to track illegal online firearms trafficking and is dedicating $4 million and additional personnel to enhance the National Integrated Ballistics Information Network.

ATF is finalizing a rule to ensure that dealers who ship firearms notify law enforcement if their guns are lost or stolen in transit.

The Attorney General issued a memo encouraging every U.S. Attorney’s Office to renew domestic violence outreach efforts.

3. Increase mental health treatment and reporting to the background check system.

The Administration is proposing a new $500 million investment to increase access to mental health care.

The Social Security Administration has indicated that it will begin the rulemaking process to include information in the background check system about beneficiaries who are prohibited from possessing a firearm for mental health reasons.

The Department of Health and Human Services is finalizing a rule to remove unnecessary legal barriers preventing States from reporting relevant information about people prohibited from possessing a gun for specific mental health reasons.

4. Shape the future of gun safety technology.

The President has directed the Departments of Defense, Justice, and Homeland Security to conduct or sponsor research into gun safety technology.

The President has also directed the departments to review the availability of smart gun technology on a regular basis, and to explore potential ways to further its use and development to more broadly improve gun safety.

Congress should support the President’s request for resources for 200 new ATF agents and investigators to help enforce our gun laws, as well as a new $500 million investment to address mental health issues.

Because we all must do our part to keep our communities safe, the Administration is also calling on States and local governments to do all they can to keep guns out of the wrong hands and reduce gun violence. It is also calling on private-sector leaders to follow the lead of other businesses that have taken voluntary steps to make it harder for dangerous individuals to get their hands on a gun. In the coming weeks, the Administration will engage with manufacturers, retailers, and other private-sector leaders to explore what more they can do.

New Actions by the Federal Government

Keeping Guns Out of the Wrong Hands Through Background Checks

The most important thing we can do to prevent gun violence is to make sure those who would commit violent acts cannot get a firearm in the first place. The National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), which was created by Congress to prevent guns from being sold to prohibited individuals, is a critical tool in achieving that goal. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the background check system has prevented more than 2 million guns from getting into the wrong hands. We know that making the system more efficient, and ensuring that it has all appropriate records about prohibited purchasers, will help enhance public safety. Today, the Administration is announcing the following executive actions to ensure that all gun dealers are licensed and run background checks, and to strengthen the background check system itself:

Making Our Communities Safer from Gun Violence

In order to improve public safety, we need to do more to ensure smart and effective enforcement of our gun laws and make sure that criminals and other prohibited persons cannot get their hands on lost or stolen weapons. The Administration is therefore taking the following actions:

Increase Mental Health Treatment and Reporting to the Background Check System

The Administration is committed to improving care for Americans experiencing mental health issues. In the last seven years, our country has made extraordinary progress in expanding mental health coverage for millions of Americans. This includes the Affordable Care Act’s end to insurance company discrimination based on pre-existing conditions, required coverage of mental health and substance use disorder services in the individual and small group markets, and an expansion of mental health and substance use disorder parity policies, all of which are estimated to help more than 60 million Americans. About 13.5 million more Americans have gained Medicaid coverage since October 2013, significantly improving access to mental health care. And thanks to more than $100 million in funding from the Affordable Care Act, community health centers have expanded behavioral health services for nearly 900,000 people nationwide over the past two years. We must continue to remove the stigma around mental illness and its treatment—and make sure that these individuals and their families know they are not alone. While individuals with mental illness are more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators, incidents of violence continue to highlight a crisis in America’s mental health system. In addition to helping people get the treatment they need, we must make sure we keep guns out of the hands of those who are prohibited by law from having them. Today, the Administration is announcing the following steps to help achieve these goals:

Shaping the Future of Gun Safety Technology

Tens of thousands of people are injured or killed by firearms every year—in many cases by guns that were sold legally but then stolen, misused, or discharged accidentally. Developing and promoting technology that would help prevent these tragedies is an urgent priority. America has done this in many other areas—from making cars safer to improving the tablets and phones we use every day. We know that researchers and engineers are already exploring ideas for improving gun safety and the tracing of lost or stolen guns. Millions of dollars have already been invested to support research into concepts that range from fingerprint scanners to radio-frequency identification to microstamping technology.

As the single largest purchaser of firearms in the country, the Federal Government has a unique opportunity to advance this research and ensure that smart gun technology becomes a reality—and it is possible to do so in a way that makes the public safer and is consistent with the Second Amendment. Today, the President is taking action to further this work in the following way.

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Summary: 
President Obama has a responsibility to do everything in his power to reduce gun violence. Here’s what he’s doing.

“We know that we can’t stop every act of violence. But what if we tried to stop even one?”

President Obama

Columbine. Blacksburg. Newtown. Aurora. Tucson. Oak Creek. Charleston. San Bernardino.

Too many communities across the country are still suffering from the heartbreaking consequences of a gun in the wrong hands. In the past decade, more than 100,000 people have died as a result of gun violence. Many of these crimes were committed by people who never should have been able to purchase a gun in the first place.

Sympathy is not enough to stop gun violence. Congress has repeatedly failed to take action, blocking commonsense reforms supported by the vast majority of the American people – including gun owners themselves.

The President has a responsibility to do everything in his power to reduce gun violence. This week, he will. Here’s what he’s doing:

President Obama is Taking Commonsense Steps to Help Stop Gun Violence

Gun Violence in America: By the Numbers

 

More than 4 million

Number of American victims of assaults, robberies, and other crimes involving a gun in the last decade

More than 30,000

Number of gun deaths in America each year

More than 20,000

Number of children under 18 killed by firearms over the last decade

More than 20,000

Number of Americans who commit suicide with a firearm each year

466

Number of law enforcement officers shot and killed by felons over the last decade

3

Number of days after which a gun dealer can sell a gun to an individual if a background check is not yet complete

Get the full breakdown of the numbers on gun violence in the U.S here. 

The President’s Actions to Reduce Gun Violence

So President Obama is taking executive action to reduce gun violence. Here’s what his actions are designed to do:

Keep guns out of the wrong hands through background checks

  • The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is making clear that it doesn’t matter where you conduct your business—from a store, at gun shows, or over the Internet: If you’re in the business of selling firearms, you must get a license and conduct background checks.
  • ATF is finalizing a rule to require background checks for people trying to buy some of the most dangerous weapons and other items through a trust, corporation, or other legal entity.
  • Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch has sent a letter to States highlighting the importance of receiving complete criminal history records and criminal dispositions, information on persons disqualified because of a mental illness, and qualifying crimes of domestic violence.
  • The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is overhauling the background check system to make it more effective and efficient. The envisioned improvements include processing background checks 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and improving notification of local authorities when certain prohibited persons unlawfully attempt to buy a gun. The FBI will hire more than 230 additional examiners and other staff to help process these background checks.

Make our communities safer from gun violence

  • The Attorney General convened a call with U.S. Attorneys around the country to direct federal prosecutors to continue to focus on smart and effective enforcement of our gun laws.
  • The President’s FY2017 budget will include funding for 200 new ATF agents and investigators to help enforce our gun laws.
  • ATF has established an Internet Investigation Center to track illegal online firearms trafficking and is dedicating $4 million and additional personnel to enhance the National Integrated Ballistics Information Network.
  • ATF is finalizing a rule to ensure that dealers who ship firearms notify law enforcement if their guns are lost or stolen in transit.
  • The Attorney General issued a memo encouraging every U.S. Attorney’s Office to renew domestic violence outreach efforts.

Increase mental health treatment and reporting to the background check system

  • The Administration is proposing a new $500 million investment to increase access to mental health care.
  • The Social Security Administration has indicated that it will begin the rulemaking process to include information in the background check system about beneficiaries who are prohibited from possessing a firearm for mental health reasons.
  • The Department of Health and Human Services is finalizing a rule to remove unnecessary legal barriers preventing States from reporting relevant information about people prohibited from possessing a gun for specific mental health reasons.

Shape the future of gun safety technology

  • The President has directed the Departments of Defense, Justice, and Homeland Security to conduct or sponsor research into gun safety technology
  • The President has also directed the departments to review the availability of smart gun technology on a regular basis, and to explore potential ways to further its use and development to more broadly improve gun safety.