![\"Scott](\"https:\/\/sduptownnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/Scott_Peters_Official_113th_Congressional_Portraitweb.jpg\")
<\/a>\u201cThoughts and prayers are not enough. Moments of silence are not enough,\u201d Peters said in his floor speech. \u201cMaybe, Mr. Speaker, instead of a moment of silence the American people can get a moment of action; a moment of action that might keep their community from being next. Expressions of sympathies and condolences are nice, but ultimately are empty.\u201d<\/p>\n
A week later, Peters again took to the floor, and over the course of four days read the names of the victims of mass shootings across the country since the Sandy Hook Elementary massacre in Newtown, Conn., that took the lives of 20 elementary school children and six adults. Talk is cheap, and Congress should act, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted to remind people that we need to take action on this,\u201d Peters said in an interview with San Diego Community Newspaper Network. \u201cThe President did everything he could to enforce existing laws, but it\u2019s still going to leave a hole that Congress has to address.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, Jan. 5, President Obama introduced a series of executive actions that will expand background checks, close loopholes in the law that would now require sellers who conduct their business on the Internet and at gun shows to be licensed, and therefore require them to conduct background checks prior to selling a firearm, and to provide additional personnel to the FBI to be able to more quickly process those background checks. Obama\u2019s actions will also provide additional funding for mental health care.<\/p>\n
Last week, Obama extended an invitation to 15 members of Congress, including Peters, to meet at the White House along with Attorney General Loretta Lynch to preview the executive actions. \u201cWe don\u2019t want to give the impression that we\u2019ve solved the problem,\u201d Peters said, indicating that additional action by members of Congress is still necessary.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow do we keep this going? How can we improve the laws?\u201d<\/p>\n
In a preemptive criticism, House Speaker Paul Ryan released a statement excoriating Obama\u2019s actions. \u201cThis is a dangerous level of executive overreach, and the country will not stand for it,\u201d Ryan said. \u201cThe president is at minimum subverting the legislative branch, and potentially overturning its will.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt takes a lot of onions to criticize the president for strengthening existing laws,\u201d Peters said in response. Congressional Republicans have insisted that enforcement of the laws already on the books is all that\u2019s needed, and that no other actions should be taken to curb gun violence.<\/p>\n
\u201cEnforcement of existing laws is exactly what President Obama is trying to do. Ninety percent of Americans think expanding background checks is a reasonable thing to do,\u201d Peters said.<\/p>\n
Opponents of Obama\u2019s measures have decried them as \u201cillegal and unconstitutional.\u201d Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio claimed: \u201cThe president has waged war on the Constitution.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked if he believed Obama\u2019s executive actions were within the purview of his authority, Peters, a lawyer himself, insisted they were. Attorney General Lynch was directly involved, he said, and the actions were issued to give direction to prosecutors in order to help them more effectively follow the law. \u201cNothing about this should be controversial,\u201d Peters said.<\/p>\n
On the mental-health provisions, Peters noted that his Republican colleagues have insisted that mental illness is the leading cause of gun violence, and he challenged them to put their money where their mouths are and fully back the initiative to de-stigmatize mental illness and bolster efforts to provide treatment. \u201cAre Republicans willing to back up their notion that this is all about mental health? That gun violence is not separate from mental health?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis remains very important to people,\u201d Peters said, acknowledging that it\u2019s highly unlikely that any gun safety measures will be taken up by this Congress.<\/p>\n
\u2014Andy Cohen is a local freelance writer. Reach him at ac76@sbcglobal.net.<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Andy Cohen On Dec. 2, 2015, terrorists opened fire at a holiday party at the San Bernardino Regional Center, killing 14 people and wounding 21 others. That same day, several other people were killed in gun attacks in Houston and Savannah, Ga. A week prior, a gunman killed three people, including a police officer, […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":812,"featured_media":228128,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11555","_seopress_titles_title":"Peters invited to White House to discuss gun measures","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11547,11551,11555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-249742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-news","category-uptown-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/812"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249742\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/228128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}