* Improvement to background checks tops list of options
* Justice Department has been studying ideas since early
2011
WASHINGTON, Dec 17 (Reuters) - Unburdened by re-election
worries and empowered by law to act without Congress, U.S.
President Barack Obama could take action to improve background
checks on gun buyers, ban certain gun imports and bolster
oversight of dealers.
Prospects for gun control legislation intensified in the
wake of the school massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, as more
pro-gun rights lawmakers said on Monday they were open to the
possibility while Obama and three cabinet members met at the
White House to discuss the subject.
Having just won a second four-year term, Obama does not need
to fear alienating voters who favor gun rights and he could
press ahead without lawmakers on fronts where federal law
enables executive action.
Speaking in Newtown, where a gunman on Friday killed 20
children and six adults in an elementary school, Obama vowed
late on Sunday to "use whatever power this office holds" to try
to prevent such massacres.
"Because what choice do we have? We can't accept events like
this as routine," Obama said at Newtown High School.
His administration has the power to issue executive orders
or new rules, options that Obama is likely to consider in
combination with possible new laws.
The National Rifle Association, the largest U.S. gun rights
group with 4 million supporters, relies largely on its ability
to influence lawmakers in order to block legislation.
Obama's appointees at the U.S. Justice Department have been
studying ideas since the Jan. 8, 2011, shooting of U.S.
Representative Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona and 18 others at a
public meeting. Giffords survived but six people died.
Christopher Schroeder, who ran the Justice Department's
review, said it looked at possible legislation to send to
Congress as well as action the administration could take itself.
"You always look at both, because if you can do it
administratively it's certainly a less involved process," said
Schroeder, who has since returned to a professorship at Duke Law
School.
Many of the ideas have to do with the background checks that
licensed gun dealers run on potential buyers.
CRITICS CITE HOLES
Critics say the system has holes because it does not include
all the data it should on those ineligible to buy guns. The FBI,
which runs the system, could incorporate more data from within
the federal government - using evidence of mental incompetence,
for example.
There are privacy concerns, however, and the Justice
Department is still studying which types of data it can legally
use, Schroeder said.
"That kind of system works effectively only if all of the
potentially disqualifying information that has been gathered by
any federal, state or local authority is accessible to the
database, and that's not the case today," he said.
It is not clear what changes to the background checks would
have prevented the mass shooting in Newtown, because the killer
appeared to have used weapons his mother bought legally.
Other proposals for executive action by Obama include
sharing information with state and local law enforcement about
possibly illegal purchases; maintaining data on gun sales for
longer periods to help with investigations; and restricting the
importation of certain military-style weapons, as President
George H.W. Bush did in 1989.
A pro-gun control mayors' group co-chaired by New York City
Mayor Michael Bloomberg has pushed the Obama administration
since 2009 to adopt 40 recommendations it said were allowed
under existing law.
One of the 40 has been put into effect, said Mark Glaze,
director of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, and even that
recommendation - requiring gun dealers to report sales of
multiple semiautomatic weapons - drew heated resistance.
In 2011, when the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms
and Explosives (ATF) adopted a version of the recommendation
aimed at dealers in states near the U.S.-Mexico border, gun
makers sued and congressional Republicans tried to eliminate
funding for the rule.
A judge upheld it, allowing it to go into effect. The case
is now on appeal.
LOBBYING BLITZ
Bloomberg's group is still pushing the other recommendations
as it makes plans for a lobbying blitz over new laws, such as a
ban on high-capacity magazines. "While they are important,
they're not the big-ticket items. And we're in a big-ticket
world," Glaze said.
The administration also has leeway to act in how it defines
certain categories of people prohibited from buying a gun.
Federal law bars anyone "who has been adjudicated as a
mental defective," but it does not specify whether that means
only a court can disqualify someone, said Michael Volkov, a
former Republican Justice Department official now at the law
firm LeClairRyan.
Another option could be changing how long a firearms dealer
must keep records of a sale - a period that is now three days
but could be extended, Volkov said.
Since the Justice Department began reviewing ideas to
prevent mass shootings in early 2011, it has implemented a
handful of changes.
In May, the department unveiled an automated system to feed
records of federal indictments into the background checks
database, replacing a system in which prosecutors uploaded
information manually.
Schroeder said the department's review of firearms-related
ideas is ongoing. He described the process as informal, and not
one that has produced a formal report.
(Editing by Howard Goller and Paul Simao)