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For now, I think the current national Administration is too busy to pursue gun-control - or should be too busy anyway!!    However, we must not forget that when/if they get a chance, they'll strike hard!!   That is what they have said, straight-out.   About all it would take would be some changes in the political climate and/or a major shooting disaster.

This article points out another approach, aside from a direct legislative one.

Obama Positioning For Backdoor Gun Control

By Chuck Baldwin

On his recent trip to Central America, President Barack Obama did more than cozy up to Marxist dictators; he also signed onto an international treaty that could, in effect, be used as backdoor gun control. It appears that Obama wants to use international treaties to do what congressional legislation is not able to do: further restrict the right of the American people to keep and bear arms.

Obama is using the oft-disproved contention that "90% of the guns recovered in Mexico come from the United States" as the stated basis of his support for the international treaty he is promoting. The treaty is formally known as the Inter-American Convention Against the Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms, Ammunition, Explosives and Other Related Materials

(CIFTA) treaty. The Bill Clinton administration signed the treaty back in 1997, but the U.S. Senate has never ratified the treaty. Obama intends to change that.

To date, 33 nations in the western hemisphere have signed the treaty. The U.S. is one of four nations that have yet to ratify it. According to one senior Obama administration official, passing the treaty is a "high priority" for the President.

If ratified, the treaty would require the United States to adopt "strict licensing requirements, mark firearms when they are made and imported to make them easier to trace, and establish a process for sharing information between national law enforcement agencies investigating [gun] smuggling."

Senator John Kerry, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee promises to "work for its [the CIFTA treaty's] approval by the Senate."

Should the Senate ratify CIFTA, Americans who reload ammunition would be required to get a license from the government, and factory guns and ammunition would be priced almost out of existence due to governmental requirements to "mark" each one manufactured. Even the simple act of adding an after-market piece of equipment to a firearm, such as a scope or bipod, or reassembling a gun after cleaning it could fall into the category of "illicit manufacturing" of firearms and require government license and oversight.

In addition, CIFTA would authorize the U.S. federal government (and open the door to international entities) to supervise and regulate virtually the entire American firearms industry. Making matters worse is the fact that, as a treaty, this Act does not have to be passed by both houses of Congress, nor is it subject to judicial oversight. All Obama needs to do in order to enact this unconstitutional and egregious form of gun control is convince a Democratic-controlled Senate to pass it.

Obviously, the United Nations, from its very inception, has been one of the world's most ardent gun control proponents. As anyone who has ever driven by the U.N. building in New York City knows, a huge statue of an American-made revolver with its barrel twisted in the shape of a pretzel greets every visitor. The CIFTA treaty is one of the U.N.'s pet projects in order to achieve this long-held ambition.   <snip>

Below is an exchange reported in the Chicago Tribune

Emerging from a meeting with Mexican President Felipe Calderon, Obama said he favored a ban on assault weapons but would not push to reimpose a U.S. prohibition that lapsed in 2004.

"None of us is under any illusion that reinstating that ban would be easy," Obama said at a news conference after talks that dealt in part with the violence that has swept sections of Mexico.

Mexican officials have made it clear they want the ban reenacted. But Obama, as he stood beside Calderon, said other measures would have to suffice.

When it was his turn to answer the assault weapons question, Calderon struck a patient tone and said he grasped the nuances involved.

Another alternate path being pursued by the Gov't

The Obama Administration Makes the Wrong Call on the U.N.'s Arms Trade Treaty

On October 14, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced that the United States would seek a "strong international standard" in the control of the conventional arms trade by "seizing the opportunity presented by the Conference on the Arms Trade Treaty at the United Nations."

The U.S. will also be pressured to adopt a treaty that will conflict with rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. In 2008, the Group of Governmental Experts correctly stated that an arms trade treaty would need to respect member states' constitutional provisions, such as the Second Amendment. But the October 2008 U.N. resolution ignored this stipulation and instead stated that signatories of the treaty would have to have the "highest possible standards" to keep weapons away from all "criminal activity." The "highest possible standards" requirement and the Second Amendment are incompatible, because there is ultimately no guarantee that any privately held gun in the U.S. will never be used in criminal activity.

http://www.heritage.org/Research/InternationalOrganizations/wm2653.cfm