President Obama will charge Defense Department officials with a key role in his controversial new gun control initiatives, instructing them to research ways to improve firearms safety and become early adopters of that technology.
The moves are among multiple executive orders to be announced by the White House on Tuesday that are aimed at getting around congressional inaction on the broader issue of gun violence, one that Obama has labeled a national emergency.
"We have tens of thousands of people every single year who are killed by guns," the president said Monday. "We have suicides that are committed by firearms at a rate that far exceeds other countries. We have a frequency of mass shootings that far exceeds other countries."
His solution — expected to face significant opposition in the Republican-controlled Congress — is a series of executive orders mandating better tracking of firearms sales, more thorough background checks for gun buyers, more money for mental illness treatment and more federal personnel to coordinate all the changes.
Much of that work will fall to the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, but the executive action also contains instructions for the Defense Department to "conduct or sponsor research into gun safety technology that would reduce the frequency of accidental discharge or unauthorized use of firearms."
The Justice and Homeland Security departments also are charged with similar research. Secretaries from all three departments are directed to provide a report by mid-April outlining their "strategy designed to expedite the real-world deployment of such technology."
So-called "smart gun" technology has proved controversial, with gun rights advocates arguing that even the best advances could slow an individual's chances of self-defense.
Obama's orders not only back further research into the technology but instruct DoD to expand the use of it, where "consistent with operational needs."
Even before the full details of Obama's moves have been released, congressional Republicans are vowing to scale them back. On Monday, House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., called the ideas "overreach" and said the move appear to be aimed at undermining citizens' Second Amendment rights.
A 2013 study published by the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies estimated that the U.S. military holds roughly 2.7 million small arms weapons, including rifles, sidearms and light machine guns.
The Congressional Research Service estimates the number of civilian firearms in America at around 310 million.
