Speaking at the White House on Thursday evening, a visibly frustrated and emotional President Obama remarked on the deadly shooting at a community college in Oregon. (AP) 
 
 Speaking at the White House on Thursday evening, a visibly frustrated and emotional President Obama remarked on the deadly shooting at a community college in Oregon. (AP) 
 
 In response to the latest mass shooting during his presidency, President Obama is seriously considering circumventing Congress with his executive authority and imposing new background-check requirements for buyers who purchase weapons from high-volume gun dealers. 
 
 Under the proposed rule change, dealers who exceed a certain number of sales each year would be required to obtain a license from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and perform background checks on potential buyers. 
 
 As the president heads to Roseburg, Ore., on Friday to comfort the survivors and families of those killed in last week’s mass shooting at Umpqua Community College, the political calculus around his most vexing domestic policy issue is shifting once again. 
 
 After the Dec. 14, 2012, shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., claimed the lives of 20 students and six staff members, Obama asked Vice President Biden to devise a list of policy proposals in response, and on Jan. 26, 2013, the president announced 23 executive actions ranging from restarting federal research into the causes of gun violence to providing parity for mental health coverage under private insurance plans. He pushed for legislation mandating universal background checks on gun sales, an effort that failed in the Senate in April 2013. In August that year, Obama closed two gun-sale loopholes through executive authority, subjecting gun purchases by corporations and trusts to background checks and banning almost all re-imports of military surplus firearms to private entities. 
 
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 View Graphic ‘Our lives are shattered beyond repair’: The victims of the Oregon college shooting 
 
 In the wake of last week’s tragedy, Obama said he had asked his team “to scrub what kinds of authorities do we have to enforce the laws that we have in place more effectively to keep guns out of the hands of criminals.” 
 
 “We are hopeful we can find a way to do this,” said one senior administration official, who noted that lawyers were still working through details to ensure that the rule could pass legal muster. “It’s a lot more clear today than it was a year ago how to work this out.” 
 
 Nine days before a shooter opened fire on the Umpqua Community College campus, former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) and her husband, Mark Kelly, were at the White House to reiterate a long-standing request that those private dealers who sell a sizable number of guns conduct background checks on buyers. The proposed rule change would clarify what it means to be “engaged in the business” of selling firearms. 
 
 In a meeting with Obama’s senior adviser Valerie Jarrett, Giffords and Kelly, who became gun-control activists after Giffords was seriously wounded in a mass shooting in 2011, were pushing for a regulatory change that administration officials considered — but then shelved — nearly two years ago. 
 
 The proposed executive action aims to impose background checks on individuals who buy from dealers who sell a significant number of guns each year. The current federal statute dictates that those who are “engaged in the business” of dealing firearms need to obtain a federal license — and, therefore, conduct background checks — but exempts anyone “who makes occasional sales, exchanges, or purchases of firearms for the enhancement of a personal collection or for a hobby, or who sells all or part of his personal collection of firearms.” 
 
 White House officials drafted the proposal in late 2013 to apply to those dealers who sell at least 50 guns annually, after Congress had rejected legislation that would have expanded background checks more broadly to private sellers. While the White House Office of Legal Counsel and then-Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. initially concluded the regulation was legally defensible, according to several individuals involved in the discussions, some federal lawyers remained concerned that setting an arbitrary numerical threshold could leave the rule vulnerable to a challenge. 
 
 ATF officials, moreover, objected that it would be hard to enforce and that it was unclear how many sellers would be affected by the change. “Everyone realized it would be hugely politically controversial,” said one individual, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private discussions. 
 
 1 of 27 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × One gunman, nine victims dead: Scenes from the attack, aftermath View Photos Multiple casualties and deaths occurred after shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Ore Caption Multiple casualties and deaths occurred after shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Ore. An undated photo of gunman Chris Harper Mercer from his MySpace page. Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue. 
 
 On Monday, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton listed the idea of changing the definition of who qualifies as a gun dealer as one of her top proposals to address gun violence. 
 
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 The aides to Biden who worked most intently on the background-checks proposal in 2013 have since left the administration, but it has resurfaced periodically: Obama discussed the idea with Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch during a July 9 Oval Office meeting, aides said, three weeks after nine African American parishioners were gunned down in Charleston, S.C. Now, according to administration officials, a group of West Wing staffers are working in concert on this and other possible executive actions. 
 
 Pia Carusone, a senior adviser at Americans for Responsible Solutions, the group Giffords and Kelly founded, declined to discuss details surrounding private White House meetings. 
 
 “Over the last few years, Gabby, Mark and ARS staff have met with various administration officials to discuss how we can work together to address America’s gun violence problem,” Carusone said by e-mail. “Many potential solutions have been discussed in conversations that have included the president, vice president and their teams.” 
 
 Arkadi Gerney, senior vice president at the liberal think tank Center for American Progress, said tightening the definition of who is “engaged in the business” of selling guns “is a meaningful but modest step towards the goal of ensuring that all gun sales involve a background check.” 
 
 National Rifle Association spokeswoman Jennifer Baker, by contrast, said any change was unnecessary and could “ensnare” people not intended to be covered by the law, such as a widow selling off her late husband’s gun collection. “People who repeatedly sell large volumes of firearms are already covered in the current statute because they are already defined as ‘engaged in the business,’ ” she said. 
 
 Some activists, including those from the faith and community organizing group Metro Industrial Areas Foundation say Obama could be much bolder with his executive authority. On Thursday, the group, which is pushing the president to leverage the federal government’s purchasing power with gun manufacturers, held a rally in Lafayette Square to demand Obama call in industry leaders and insist that they develop safer technology and crack down on the stores that sell a disproportionate number of guns used in crimes. 
 
 “We have traveled here from across the nation to challenge you to stop whining about the power you don’t have, and start acting with the power you do have,” said Bishop Douglas Miles, who is on the group’s leadership team and serves as pastor of Koinonia Baptist Church in Baltimore. 
 
 Last week, Obama said that “this is something we should politicize” and that every American had “to for a while, be a single-issue voter” when it came to tightening the nation’s gun laws. 
 
 Gun-control activists have made significant political headway on the state level since the Newtown shooting. In the past year, they prevailed on background check fights in Washington state and Oregon; laws to carry concealed weapons without a permit were enacted in three states but defeated in 15. According to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, 55 percent of gun laws enacted so far this year loosened restrictions rather than tightened them, and many were quite minor. In 2012, by contrast, 72 percent of all enacted gun laws loosened restrictions. 
 
 “The gun lobby has done a very good job of tying up Washington, D.C.,” said John Feinblatt, president of the advocacy group Everytown. “It can’t tie up the people, and cannot, in fact, tie up state legislatures.” 
 
 While polling shows between 85 and 92 percent of Americans support expanding background checks, the broader issue of gun rights remains fraught. In Roseburg, where many have chafed at the administration’s gun policies, opinion remains sharply divided over whether Obama should even come to offer his condolences to victims’ families. 
 
 “Half the people in Roseburg say it’s wonderful, the other half say he shouldn’t show up,” said Earl Skonberg, a local gun owner who engages in sport shooting. ||||| President Barack Obama’s bid to assert himself in his final year will begin with long-awaited executive actions on gun control, expected to be released next week, shortly after he returns to Washington. 
 
 The White House is putting finishing touches on several measures in an effort to make progress on curbing gun violence, an issue the president and close aides have found frustratingly intractable, before the race to replace him enters prime time. 
 
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 According to gun industry insiders and others familiar with the proposals, the changes include requiring an expanded number of small-scale gun sellers to be licensed — and therefore conduct background checks — whenever selling a weapon. This wouldn’t close the so-called gun show loophole, though it has the potential to narrow it. 
 
 The administration is also expected to impose tighter rules for reporting guns that get lost or stolen on their way to a buyer. 
 
 Neither comes close to the stronger gun control measures Obama sought in the wake of the 2012 mass shooting of schoolchildren in Sandy Hook and that he has said he still wants. But with Congress unlikely to approve any new gun curbs before the 2016 election, the measures are in line with what gun-control advocates were hoping would be adopted before Obama leaves office. 
 
 As with every aspect of the president’s final year, the decisions about the gun actions are being made with a sense of limited time and the 2016 political calendar. Obama will be returning from his Hawaii vacation, eager to make a splash; an earlier-than-normal State of the Union address on Jan. 12 is central to that strategy. But with the Iowa caucuses taking place on Feb. 1, Obama will have only a small window to act before the primary melee begins to crowd out other political news. 
 
 The background check change has been anticipated for months. Obama will tighten the definition of what it means to be “engaged in the business” of firearms sales. Currently, the law says people who sell guns with the “principal objective of livelihood and profit” have to get a dealer’s license through the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives — and therefore conduct a background check on buyers no matter where they sell, including online or at a gun show. 
 
 It’s unclear whether a lot more dealers would line up for licenses. But gun-control advocates say a better definition would make it much easier to prosecute sellers who should, but don’t. Only about half of the people who are tried for selling guns without a license are convicted by juries, according to a report from Everytown, the pro-gun control group led by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. 
 
 In an interview, Everytown officials couldn’t confirm whether the White House was heeding their advice. But, said legal director Liz Avore, “Any kind of clarification would be beneficial in this context because right now most sellers and prosecutors are kind of flying blind.” 
 
 It's not clear whether Obama has settled on final language yet. But as one of the major proponents of a change, Everytown has recommended adding several factors to the definition — including selling guns in their original packaging, reselling a gun shortly after acquiring it, maintaining a certain quantity of guns for sale or selling more than 25 guns a year — as possible signals that someone needs a license. 
 
 A top gun industry executive defended the current definition, saying it requires dealers to make most of their living from gun sales before requiring a license. Based on conversations with ATF officials this month, the executive described the upcoming change as "overreach": “If you are not doing it for the principal purpose of earning a livelihood AND earn a profit, you are not engaged in the business as defined by Congress,” he said in an email. 
 
 Another victory for advocates is likely to be a requirement for all licensed dealers and manufacturers to report to federal authorities any guns that are stolen in transit to a buyer as missing from their inventory. Currently, advocates say, thieves often target packages addressed to gun retailers in the hopes of stealing unregistered guns that are harder to trace. And while buyer and seller might sort out refunds or replacements on their own, they’re not required to report the missing guns to the National Crime Information Center. 
 
 ATF first proposed the new regulation in August 2014, which industry opposed, saying a voluntary reporting program was working just fine. But the year-and-a-half lag between the rule’s proposal and finalization is another factor urging Obama to act forcefully as he enters the last year in his term. 
 
 It is not clear whether the measure will take the form of a new regulation (which would take months longer to finish because of requirements for public comment) or clarification of an existing rule, which would take less time but might not carry as much weight with the courts — or a future administration. 
 
 “We have not been told that they are drafting a proposed rule,” the industry executive said. “But it remains to be seen.” 
 
 The White House declined to comment on the substance of the executive actions or their timing. Communications Director Jen Psaki told reporters at an event hosted by Bloomberg News in mid-December that the new gun measures were coming in “weeks, not months.” 
 
 This latest round of executive moves follows 23 actions related to gun violence that Obama ordered in 2013, in the months following the Sandy Hook massacre, plus two more in 2014. During that same period, Vice President Joe Biden led a failed campaign with congressional Democrats to pass a bill to impose near-universal background checks. 
 
 The president’s announcement of new gun actions will be more like his immigration executive orders in late 2014 — currently held up by the courts — issued as part of a broader campaign to pressure Congress and draw a contrast with Republicans. 
 
 White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett also raised gun-control advocates’ hopes for new domestic violence provisions last month. In a post on the actress Lena Dunham’s website, Jarrett noted that guns are the most likely cause of death for women who are victims of domestic partner violence. 
 
 Gun-control activists acknowledged that changing the rules for licenses might have limited impact on what sellers actually do in the short term. But in this political environment, they’ll take whatever measures they can, no matter how incremental. 
 
 “Setting cultural norms," said Everytown research director Ted Alcorn, "is something that laws do."
– President Obama's next executive action may be to expand background checks for some gun buyers—based on whom they're buying from. Obama, who reacted with emotion to the mass shooting at Umpqua Community College and will visit Roseburg, Ore., on Friday, is "seriously considering" new rules that would force private high-volume dealers to perform background checks on potential buyers, according to the Washington Post. Private dealers who sell a certain number of guns each year would also need to get a license. Nine days before the Umpqua shooting, gun-control activists Gabrielle Giffords and her husband, Mark Kelly, visited the White House to repeat their desire to see just such a rule put in place. Officials considered targeting dealers who sell at least 50 guns a year back in 2013, but the plan was ultimately put on ice. The proposed rule change would clarify the federal statute, which notes anyone "engaged in the business" of dealing firearms needs to obtain a federal license and conduct background checks, except anyone "who makes occasional sales, exchanges, or purchases of firearms for the enhancement of a personal collection or for a hobby, or who sells all or part of his personal collection of firearms." Earlier this week, Hillary Clinton said she would take executive action to change the definition of a gun dealer if elected president, per the Post. A rep for the NRA, however, says the proposed change would "ensnare" a widow selling off her late husband's gun collection, for example. "People who repeatedly sell large volumes of firearms are already covered in the current statute," she says.