Obama Announces New Gun Control Measures

Despite being shutdown earlier this year, President Barack Obama isn't giving up on toughening gun control laws. On Thursday, Obama announced two more steps in his battle to curb gun violence.

The first measure addresses the ability to import military surplus weapons. Under the current laws, military weapons that are sold or donated to foreign allies can be repurchased and brought back into the United States by private groups. Since 2005, some 250,000 guns have been brought back into the country under that law, and according to the White House, some of those weapons have ended up on the street. Obama's new policy would limit the groups that are allowed to purchase these weapons to entities like museums and the government.

The second new endeavor will close a loophole that allows those who fail a background check to register weapons to a corporation or a trust, which lets them hide behind a larger group in order to get their hands on weapons they aren't legally eligible to have. Under the new rules, any person associated with these corporations or trusts must undergo the same fingerprint-based background checks that an individual citizen would.

The two new initiatives come after Obama's attempt at stricter gun control laws was shutdown in the senate. Now, the president is focusing on a list of executive actions that won't require broad congressional agreement.

Calls to tighten gun control, and Obama's drive to do so, increased exponentially after a 20-year-old gunman entered a school and killed 20 first graders and six adults in Newtown, Conn. earlier this year.

But some of the major reforms that could truly curb gun violence, like an assault weapons ban, remain out of reach. Thursday's announcement of new steps in the fight against are meant to show Obama's commitment to the cause and echo his sentiments from the day the Senate shutdown his plan to beef up gun control. During his speech after the bill's defeat, Obama made the promise himself: "Sooner or later, we are going to get this right."