Le plan d'Obama : les armes à feu.

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An emotional President Barack Obama urged Americans to back White House moves to make it harder to buy firearms as he assailed the gun lobby for opposing commonsense steps.

Fulfilling a pledge to bypass Congress, the White House on Tuesday unveiled unilateral measures to expand background checks on gun buyers and step up the enforcement of gun laws.

In the last year of a presidency punctuated by mass shootings, Mr Obama said: “The gun lobby may be holding Congress hostage right now but they can’t hold America hostage. We do not have to accept this carnage as the price of freedom.”

By using his executive powers, the president is likely to face legal challenges as well as new conflict with Republicans, who are fierce defenders of Americans’ right to bear arms.

Speaking at the White House Mr Obama, who was introduced by the father of a seven-year old murdered in 2012 at Sandy Hook elementary school, shed tears when he recalled the massacre of 20 children and six adults.

“The United States of America is not the only country on earth with violent and dangerous people. We are not inherently more prone to violence,” Mr Obama said. “But we are the only advanced country on earth that sees this kind of mass violence erupt with this kind of frequency.”

The president is tightening rules on gun sales and closing loopholes so weapons do not fall into the hands of criminals and the mentally ill. An existing federal law requires background checks on gun buyers, but they are not universal.

The share prices of gunmakers such as rose on Tuesday as investors anticipated that the White House plans would spur a rush of gun buying before the new restrictions come into effect.

Paul Ryan, the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, said Mr Obama was targeting law-abiding citizens rather than criminals and terrorists. Mr Ryan added that a Republican president could overturn the plans.

“From day one, the president has never respected the right to safe and legal gun ownership that our nation has valued since its founding,” he said.

Mr Obama dismissed critics who say he belittles the right to bear arms in the second amendment to the constitution.

“We understand there are some constraints on our freedom in order to protect innocent people. We cherish our right to privacy but we accept that you have to go through a metal detector before being allowed to board a flight,” he said.

An existing federal law requires anyone “engaged in the business” of selling guns to obtain a licence and conduct background checks, which are intended to root out buyers with criminal records and mental illnesses.

But small-time dealers and occasional private sellers are exempted from the licensing and vetting requirements.

The Obama administration is closing that “loophole” by revising rules to broaden the definition of those in the gun business to include internet sales, transactions at gun shows and individuals who have sold as few as two weapons.

The White House is also closing a loophole that has enabled people to evade background checks for the most dangerous weapons — such as machine guns and sawn-off shotguns — by purchasing them through trusts, corporations and other legal entities.

The background check system, which is run by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, received 22.2m requests in 2015.

The White House wants to make that system more effective by encouraging state governments and parts of the federal bureaucracy to feed more information into it on crime and mental health issues.

Mr Obama — who has already taken executive action on climate change and immigration that is being challenged in the courts — will discuss the measures in a televised town hall on Thursday.

On Monday he said: “Although we have to be very clear that this is not going to solve every violent crime in this country, it’s not going to prevent every mass shooting, it’s not going to keep every gun out of the hands of a criminal, it will potentially save lives and spare families the pain and the extraordinary loss that they’ve suffered as a consequence of a firearm getting in the hands of the wrong people.”