Newswise — The president’s executive order on gun control and its focus on the “gun-show loophole” is largely political theater, said an expert on legal issues surrounding gun control in the United States said.
The executive order, which has been carefully crafted to survive a court challenge, attempts to clarify a distinction in federal firearms regulations between gun sales by businesses and guns sales by private individuals, said Timothy Lytton, a professor of law at Georgia State University's College of Law.
“In the end, the president’s executive order is well within his powers to enforce the law, although given his inability to break the legislative stalemate over universal background checks, his powers to advance significant gun controls are extremely limited,” said Lytton.
The new rules might have a marginal effect on reducing illegal sales, it falls far short of gun-control advocates’ longstanding efforts to close the “loophole,” said Lytton. Moreover, with over 350 million firearms already in private hands, even the most ambitious proposals to limit firearms sales are unlikely to end high profile massacres.
Lytton, author of the book Suing the Gun Industry: A Battle at the Crossroads of Gun Control and Mass Torts, has appeared in a number of media outlets as an expert on gun violence and lawsuits against the industry, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, Reuters, the Boston Globe, the Atlanta Journal Constitution, the Hartford Courant, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, MSNBC and 11 Alive as well as several public radio stations.
Read a longer discussion by Lytton about Obama’s executive order at https://theconversation.com/obamas-executive-order-on-guns-is-mostly-political-theater-52758. See more of Timothy Lytton’s work at http://law.gsu.edu/profile/timothy-d-lytton/.
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