The most significant of these came in 2013 when then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid tried—and failed—to force through a bill that would have placed unnecessary burdens on the ability of law-abiding citizens by expanding background checks and reporting requirements in a manner that was not consistent with the Second Amendment.

The Republican-led Senate has attempted to take real action in the 114^th Congress to reduce gun violence by considering measures that would prevent terrorists from obtaining firearms, incentivize states to provide mental health records for background checks and criminalize straw purchasing and weapons trafficking in a more responsible way than the President. Unfortunately, the President’s own party blocked these real common sense measures from moving forward in the Senate.

Since President Obama couldn’t get his gun control agenda through Congress, he now wants to use the regulatory process to implement it in pieces.

What he calls ‘common sense’ steps to reduce gun violence will do little to curb violent crime and certainly would not have prevented a single one of the tragic mass shootings our nation has recently endured.

If the President wanted to take a serious approach to reducing violent crime, he would work with Congress to pass real mental health reform and violent crime reduction initiatives and he would instruct the Justice Department to do more to enforce the laws already on the books. In fact, the number of gun crime convictions U.S. Attorneys have secured have been on the decline since the President has taken office. They dropped dramatically the year after the Sandy Hook tragedy and have continued to drop each year since, despite President Obama's pledge to combat violent crime and get tougher on people who illegally buy guns.

The reality is the gun is the tool, not the cause, of these crimes. We must have a broader conversation about mental health care in our country, as well as look at how current laws are being enforced, to understand why these tragic events keep happening and what we can do to prevent them in the future. If we do not get to the root cause of these tragedies, we will not find the solution to prevent them from reoccurring.