Dive Brief:

• A tearful President Barack Obama Tuesday announced that his administration will take the few, limited steps it can to attempt to prevent gun violence, including clarifying guidance on who should be licensed as a gun dealer, which dealers should be conduct background checks, and urging states to take more action.

• The announcement prompted unsurprising outcry from many gun advocates and sellers and praise from gun control activists, and some of the President’s proposals could face legal challenge or fail to have much of any impact on either gun sales or violence.

• In fact, a slew of stories noted, as they often do, that fears about gun control, prompted by politicians' talk or gun-related events, often spur more gun sales. Gun sales were up this past Black Friday, when the Federal Bureau of Investigation said it processed two background checks per second. The FBI ran 185,345 background checks that day, 5% more than Black Friday last year and a daily record.

Dive Insight:

The FBI report in December showing record gun sales on the big holiday shopping weekend and news reports detailing a spur in sales prompted by both mass shootings and gun control efforts all belie the fact that gun sales in many areas are down. That overall trend has hit the bottom lines of retailers like Cabela’s and Sportsman’s Warehouse.

Wal-Mart is now requiring managers in its Texas stores that sell alcohol to check for gun permits after a new law in the state allows for licensed people to carry handguns in public. Cashiers or door greeters at the stores are told to alert managers if they see someone with a gun, who is required to check that the customer has a permit to carry a handgun. 

Gun control advocates, in an effort to bypass the U.S. Congress, which is seen as being intractable about gun limits, have turned to states to win a series of legislative gun controls nationwide. It will likely take a series of measures to make a difference in gun violence in the U.S., University of Pennsylvania professor Susan Sorenson, who studies violence prevention, told the Associated Press.

The president's action "has potential impact, the degree or the type, it's hard to predict," Sorenson said. "And it's really important to acknowledge that we can't just have one change and expect that to change things wildly."