Obama Starts Pushing Gun Control

The Second Amendment and court precedent guarantee an individual's right to bear arms, but improved and expanded background checks are needed to prevent gun violence like the shocking attack in Tucson in January, President Obama wrote in an op-ed Sunday.

Writing in the Arizona Daily Star more than two months after the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and 18 others, six of whom died, Obama said he's "willing to bet" that responsible gun owners would support laws to "keep an irresponsible, law-breaking few -- dangerous criminals and fugitives, for example -- from getting their hands on" guns.

"Most gun owners know that the word 'commonsense' isn't a code word for 'confiscation," he wrote.

"I'm willing to bet they don't think that using a gun and using common sense are incompatible ideas -- that we should check someone's criminal record before he can check out at a gun seller; that an unbalanced man shouldn't be able to buy a gun so easily; that there's room for us to have reasonable laws that uphold liberty, ensure citizen safety and are fully compatible with a robust Second Amendment," the president wrote.

Obama wrote in Sunday's op-ed that his administration has not curbed gun rights but, in fact, has expanded them, by letting people carry guns in national parks and wildlife refuges.

But, he said, with more than 27,000 deaths from guns each year -- a number down from its height of more than 39,000 in 1993, more needs to be done to prevent assailants like Tucson suspect Jared Loughner from getting a hold of weapons.

Click here to read the president's editorial on gun laws in the Arizona Daily Star.