As expected, Republican members of Louisiana’s congressional delegation came out firing today shortly after President Barack Obama unveiled his blueprint to tighten restrictions on gun sales in the wake of continued mass shootings across the country.
U.S. Rep. Charles Boustany, R-Lafayette, was the first to issue a scathing criticism after Obama’s announcement, drawing an analogy between the president and a monarch.
“When this President can’t get what he wants, he acts unilaterally by Executive Order. Our President is not a king; he is meant to be held accountable by the people who elect him and by the coequal branches of our government,” Boustany says in a prepared statement.
Boustany also announced he is co-sponsoring a bill with fellow Rep. Marlin Stutzman, R-Indiana, called the Separation of Powers Restoration and Second Amendment Protection Act. The bill would render void any actions that violate the Second Amendment or encroach on Congress’ Article I powers. The bill would also allow legal challenges to those actions.
“While the President complains about congressional inaction, Congress is already working on mental health legislation that will improve treatment and ensure guns are kept out of the hands of the mentally unstable,” Boustany continues in his statement.
Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-Louisiana, also joined in, calling Obama’s executive order “big government at its worst.”
“If the President is interested in stopping mass shootings, we should look at the root causes, such as home grown terrorism in San Bernardino and recognized but untreated mental illness in Lafayette and Newtown,” Cassidy says in a statement. “To the degree that this is addressed, Americans will be safer.”
At the centerpiece of Obama’s plan is a more sweeping definition of gun dealers that the administration hopes will expand the number of sales subject to background checks, The Associated Press reports. Under current law, only federally licensed gun dealers must conduct background checks on buyers. But at gun shows, websites and flea markets, sellers often skirt that requirement by declining to register as licensed dealers.
“This is not a plot to take away everybody’s guns,” Obama said today. “You pass a background check, you purchase a firearm. The problem is some gun sellers have been operating under a different set of rules.”
The Associated Press has the full story on Obama’s executive order.
