By MaryCate Most

Assistant News Editor

Following President Barack Obama’s emotional address about new gun control measures, Illinois 13^th district representative Rodney Davis reiterated his opposition to gun control.

“I took an oath to support and defend the Constitution and will continue to protect Americans’ Second Amendment rights,” Davis said in a statement Tuesday. “Time and time again this president has shown a blatant disregard for our nation’s Constitution and unfortunately these latest actions are no different.”

A tearful Obama said in a public address on Tuesday that he is taking executive action to enforce stricter gun control. The president said in his speech that he feels the right to carry a gun has limited Americans’ unalienable rights.

“Our right to peaceful assembly -– that right was robbed from moviegoers in Aurora and Lafayette. Our unalienable right to life, and liberty, and the pursuit of happiness — those rights were stripped from college students in Blacksburg and Santa Barbara, and from high schoolers at Columbine, and from first-graders in Newtown. First-graders. And from every family who never imagined that their loved one would be taken from our lives by a bullet from a gun,” he said.

Davis disagreed with the president in his statement, saying that there were other ways to address the issue of gun violence in the U.S.

“We have a mental health crisis in this country that cannot be ignored and I hope the president will join Congress in trying to reform the system and address these issues legally and through our legislative process,” Davis said in his statement.

Although the Second Amendment protects the right to bear arms, this executive action will put a new check on gun sales.

U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has created new guidelines that will narrow the “gun show loophole.” In short, private gun sales are unregulated by the government. There are currently no background checks required when privately selling guns, which means that gun show sales or internet sales are unregulated.

The new ATF guidelines intend to limit these private sales by redefining what it means to be “in the business” of firearms and requiring all sellers, on the Internet or at a gun show, to obtain a license to sell their guns.

In a statement on Tuesday, Chris Cox, the executive director of the National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action, expressed distrust in the president’s actions.

“The proposed executive actions are ripe for abuse by the Obama Administration, which has made no secret of its contempt for the Second Amendment,” Cox said. “The NRA will continue to fight to protect the fundamental, individual Right to Keep and Bear Arms as guaranteed under our Constitution.”

The NRA and congress members have opposed gun control throughout the Obama administration, leading Obama to use an executive action to change the gun control system. The president said that mass shootings such as the massacre in Newtown, Conn. at the Sandy Hook Elementary school and daily shootings in Chicago, need to be prevented immediately.

“Every time I think about those kids it gets me mad,” Obama said. “And by the way, it happens on the streets of Chicago every day.”

[email protected]