Peter Squires, University of Brighton
It’s common in the US to refer to a second-term president in his final year as a “lame duck”, his time limited, his momentum gone, and his political capital ebbing away to whoever’s next in line for the White House. But, not for the first time, Barack Obama has surprised and confounded his critics.
Deeply frustrated by the failure of his package of “sensible gun controls” to secure enough votes in the Senate back in April 2013, he has now announced a series of executive control measures as a way of delivering on key gun control commitments, re-energising the debate and doing so in a way that may favour the Democratic cause in a presidential election year. Continue reading “Obama’s bold move against guns proves the politics of firearms really is changing”