criminals hands is to whistle past the graveyard. we need to get rid of the places where these tragedies occur. you can t just dispense with the subject, we re not talking about that now. if we re not, we better be talking about what really is the problem. otherwise we re specializing in nothing. dan, do i want you to address that. this is the argument that we always hear. criminals don t at bide by any of these laws. it doesn t matter if you clarify existing laws or make new laws, criminals don t abide by them. you re never going to keep every gun out of the hand of every criminal, you re not going to prevent every tragedy. you can prevent a lot of them by keeping the guns out of the hands of people we all agree shouldn t have them. look at the fact that 2.4 million sales have been blocked you have to dig really deep to try and come up with some misleading statistic to try and show background checks don t work because they do. every day, hundreds of sales, whether they re prosecu
as proposals or guidance or encouragement with enforcement being a big question. it will potentially save lives in this country. reporter: president obama teeing up to announce a major overhaul on gun control this morning. giving congress a hard pass. these are recommendations that are well within my legal authority and the executive branch. reporter: the president set to lay out a series of executive orders, including clarifying that anyone in the business of selling guns must acquire a license and ensure background checks no matter the volume of guns sold or where. the white house also urging more state reporting of background check records that could disqualify buyers with mental illness or a history of domestic violence. proposing beefing up the background check system itself. hiring more staff to operate it around the clock. and the president will ask for
plus there are big questions about how all of this can be enforced. it will potentially save lives in this country. president obama teeing up to announce a major overhaul on gun control this morning. giving congress a hard pass. these are recommendations that are well within my legal authority and the executive branch. the president set to lay out a series of executive orders including clarifying that anyone in the business of selling guns must acquire a license and ensure background checks no matter the volume of guns sold or where. the white house also urging more state reporting of background check records that could disqualify buyers with mental illness or a history of domestic violence. proposing beefing up the background check system itself. hiring more staff to operate it around the clock. and the president will ask for much more funding for mental health treatment.
well, there s hardly any of the guns that end up in crime that are traced back to gun shows. that s the federal government s own data. so we re addressing something that doesn t really go after the problem. if the government and if the folks that are clamoring for change in this area really wanted to make a change, rather than going after a loophole that s not really there, they might take a look at where most of the tragedies have occurred with public shootings and mass murders. they ve been in gun-free zones. all but two of these horrible episodes have occurred in these gun-free zones since 1950. congress needs to get busy and get rid of those. okay, dan, you want to tackle that? gun-free zones don t appear to be working. no, that s not what we re here to talk about. the reality is that gun-free zones has nothing to do with the problem we have in our country with gun violence.
no? why? that s not mexico. so what. what s the difference? in all reality, right? the point is they re coming through. yes, i m going to have a conversation with whoever made the mistake, no doubt about that. the truth is people are pouring through our borders which are open. donald trump s the guy who brought that to the forefront. now everybody is talking about it. do you remember from the first debate how they attacked him, they continued to attack him. you can t do that. it s not american. no, no, it is american. that s our laws. we are a land of laws. it made the debate in the forefront of this election, no question about that. the question is what will we do about it? michael cohen, thank you very much. happy new year to you. same to you. later this hour we ll talk more about the president s plan with his senior adviser, valerie jarrett. and guns is a big issue. we know it as part of our culture and crime problem. thursday at 8:00 p.m., president obama will join ou