WASHINGTON — Hawaiian vacation over, President Obama says he is energized for his final year in office and ready to turn mediate attention to the issue of gun violence.
Obama scheduled a meeting Monday with Attorney General Loretta Lynch to discuss a three-month review of what steps he could take. The president is expected to use executive action to strengthen background checks required for gun purchases.
Republicans strongly oppose any moves Obama may make, and legal fights seem likely over what critics would view as infringing on their Second Amendment rights. But Obama is committed to an aggressive agenda even as public attention shifts to the presidential election.
Obama spent much of his vacation out of the public eye, golfing with friends and dining out on Oahu with his family. He returned to the White House about noon Sunday.
“I am fired up for the year that stretches out before us. That’s because of what we’ve accomplished together over the past seven,” Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address.
While in Hawaii, he also worked on his final State of the Union address, set for Jan. 12. The prime-time speech will give him another chance to try to reassure the public about his national security stewardship after the attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California.
Congressional Republicans have outlined a competing agenda for January, saying they will spend the first days of 2016 taking another crack at eliminating keys parts of the president’s health insurance law and ending federal funding for Planned Parenthood. The legislation is unlikely to become law, but it is popular with the Republican base in an election year.
The debate about what Obama may do on gun violence has spilled over into the campaign.
Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton has called for more aggressive executive action on guns, and rival Bernie Sanders said he would support Obama’s expected move.
The Vermont senator told ABC’s “This Week” that he believes “there is a wide consensus” that “we should expand and strengthen the instant background check.” He added: “I think that’s what the president is trying to do and I think that will be the right thing to do.”
Republican candidates largely oppose efforts to expand background checks or take other steps that curb access to guns.
“This president wants to act as if he is a king, as if he is a dictator,” unable to persuade Congress and forcing an “illegal executive action” on the country, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie told “Fox News Sunday.”
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, also on Fox, said Obama’s “first impulse is always to take rights away from law-abiding citizens, and it’s wrong.”
In the radio address, Obama said tens of thousands of people have died from gun violence since background check legislation stalled three years ago.
“We know that we can’t stop every act of violence. But what if we tried to stop even one?” he said.
He will participate in a town hall Thursday night at George Mason University in Virginia on reducing gun violence. He will take questions from the audience at the event moderated by CNN’s Anderson Cooper.
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