The president is planning to unveil new executive measures on gun control on Tuesday, which the House speaker slammed as a “dangerous level of executive overreach” that would be “targeting law-abiding citizens, intruding further into innocent Americans’ lives.”
Problem is, neither Ryan—nor anyone else—actually knows what Obama is going to do. In the wake of recent mass shootings, he has floated the possibility of revising the definition of high-volume gun dealers through his executive authority, which could expand background checks to many more people. But the White House hasn’t confirmed that.
Ryan waved that pesky fact away. “While we don’t yet know the details of the plan, the president is at minimum subverting the legislative branch, and potentially overturning its will,” he concluded. The Republican presidential candidates were even quicker to, uh, jump the gun, pre-emptively criticizing Obama’s yet-to-be released executive action on the Sunday shows.