Obama seeks to bypass legislative branch to implement gun control

With his frustration growing over the past two years over a "dysfunctional" Congress, President Barack Obama has increasingly turned to bypassing the legislative branch as he did yesterday to implement tighter gun control laws.

He asserted in October 2011 that where Congress would not act, then he would act under the "We Can't Wait" campaign that he had launched 10 months after Republicans took control of the US House of Representatives.

The president has since then relied on executive orders, policy directives, waivers, signing statements and other administrative measures to bypass Congress to push ahead on contentious issues, including immigration, welfare, education reform and now gun violence.

Acting on the shooting incident in Newtown, Connecticut (See: US mulls gun control as youth shoots down 26 at school), Obama announced 23 executive actions yesterday aimed at ensuring that guns did not get into the wrong hands. He has also called on Congress to ban the sale of assault rifles, limit the size of ammunition clips and introduce mandatory background checks for all gun sales.

William Howell, a University of Chicago expert on presidential powers, said, increasingly what was being seen was a lot of the policy-making apparatus of the federal government shifting to the executive branch.

Obama has come in for accusations of unconstitutional power grab from gun rights groups.