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Backgrounder: U.S. presidents' actions on gun control

Xinhua, June 13, 2016 Adjust font size:

U.S. President Barack Obama on Monday once again called attention to the pressing problem of gun violence in the United States following the mass shooting in a nightclub in Orlando, Florida, which killed 50 and wounded 53 others.

Actually, until the end of 2015, Obama has made 15 public statements condemning gun violence and calling for a restriction on gun sales. However, he is not the only U.S. president who has made efforts to curb gun violence.

The following are more statements or actions regarding U.S. gun control made by U.S. presidents in the past decades.

This year on Jan. 5, Obama presented at the White House a set of administrative measures to restrict gun use, including strict background checks on firearm purchasers, federal research on gun safety technology and a request for 500 million U.S. dollars to improve mental health programs.

On Dec. 3, 2015, a day after a married couple shot 14 people dead and wounded 17 in a service center for disabled people in California, Obama appealed for gun law reforms to restrict gun sales, the third time in a week that he made such a statement.

On Dec. 16, 2012, Obama called for an urgent change to current U.S. gun laws when attending a meeting to remember the 26 lives, including those of 20 children, lost in the school mass shootings on Dec. 14 that year, in Newtown, Connecticut.

After the 2012 shooting, the Obama administration initiated but failed to push for stronger gun control laws. Recalling such frustration, Obama admitted that the failure to reform U.S. gun laws is "one of the greatest frustrations" of his presidency.

During the presidency of George W. Bush, national gun laws were somewhat loosened as the Democratic Party supported the gun lobby and gun supporters.

Compared to Obama, Bush, according to local U.S. media, made no direct public statement on any shooting incidents during his term.

Bush's predecessor Bill Clinton successfully signed several federal acts on gun control in 1994, including the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, and the Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act, commonly called the Assault Weapons Ban (AWB).

However, the AWB expired on Sept. 13, 2004 as President Clinton had made the compromise with a Democrats-dominated congress that the ban only had effect for a term of 10 years.

Given that the right to keep and bear arms is protected by the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, many see scant hope to make big changes to American gun laws.

An average of about 33,000 people were killed by guns annually in the United States in the past five years, according to data released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Endi