President Obama “will embrace a comprehensive plan to reduce gun violence that will call for major legislation to expand background checks for gun purchases and lay out 19 separate actions the president could take by invoking the power of his office,” the New York Times reports.

“Lawmakers and other officials said that the president could use a public event as soon as Wednesday to signal his intention to engage in the biggest Congressional fight over guns in nearly two decades, focusing on the heightened background checks and including efforts to ban assault weapons and their high-capacity clips. But given the difficulty of pushing new rules through a bitterly divided Congress, Mr. Obama will also promise to act on his own to reduce gun violence wherever possible.”

Roger Simon: “The gun lobby has weathered this before. It has faced public outrage over gun massacres many times. And it has its playbook ready.”

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and lawmakers agreed to “a broad package of changes to gun laws that would expand the state’s ban on assault weapons and would include new measures to keep guns away from the mentally ill,” the New York Times reports.

“Approval of the legislation would make New York the first state to act in response to the mass shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., last month.”

A new Pew Research poll finds “there are clear areas of agreement when it comes to a number of gun policy proposals. Fully 85% of Americans favor making private gun sales and sales at gun shows subject to background checks, with comparable support from Republicans, Democrats and independents. Similarly, 80% support laws to prevent mentally ill people from purchasing guns, with broad support across party lines.”

“But this bipartisan consensus breaks down when it comes to other proposals. Two-thirds of Americans (67%) favor creating a federal database to track gun sales, but there is a wide partisan divide between Democrats (84%) and Republicans (49%). A smaller majority of the public (55%) favors a ban on assault-style weapons; Democrats (69%) also are far more likely than Republicans (44%) to support this. Similar partisan divides exist when it comes to banning high-capacity ammunition clips or the sale of ammunition online.”

First Read: “The White House is serious about making a push for some new gun laws, with universal background checks serving as the likely centerpiece of what the president asks Congress to pass when guns are brought up at the State of the Union. But you also get the sense that the air is leaking ever-so-slightly out of this balloon that is called gun control — as those advocating new government regulations start accepting the political realities on Capitol Hill. The wild card here: the victim groups. Just like the 9/11 widows, they could become a powerful force that does move public opinion.”

A new Gallup poll finds 38% of Americans “are dissatisfied with
the nation’s gun laws and want them strengthened. This is up from 25%
who held this set of views a year ago, and is the highest since 2001.
Still, more Americans are either satisfied with current gun laws, 43%,
or think they should be loosened, 5%.”