Stepping into the first week of January is always bracing and compelling. The calendar is crisp and new, waiting to be filled in with the hopeful details of potential and possibilities. These are days to take the initiative, and that, apparently, was the spirit that animated President Obama’s remarks in the East Room of the White House Tuesday. He announced executive actions he will take in the new year to address this country’s epidemic of gun violence. Yet the past was clearly on his mind as he invoked the memory of the children and educators killed in Sandy Hook three years ago, wiping away tears, pausing to compose himself, and explaining, “Every time I think of those kids, it makes me mad.” The initiatives announced by the President, however, reflected not so much anger, but determination to remain accountable to victims of gun violence, represented by many of those gathered in the room with him from Newtown and several other towns and cities around the nation.

The two key provisions of his package of executive actions — closing a loophole in the current system of background checks for those purchasing guns, and providing the FBI with sufficient staffing to process background checks 24 hours a day, seven days a week — hardly seem like the usurpation of Second Amendment rights that the President’s gun lobby opponents saw in Tuesday’s announcement. Polls consistently show that roughly nine in ten Americans, gun owners included, favor background checks for gun purchases. And gun control opponents have long been calling for better enforcement of existing gun laws. These actions may be portrayed by their opponents as a desperate attempt by a President thwarted by Congress to redraw the constitutional lines of authority. In this case, however, most people are already standing with the President on one side of that line.

The issue of background checks highlights just how intractable the debate on gun safety issues has become. Background checks accomplish two things: they allow law-abiding citizens to purchase all the guns they want; and they prevent domestic abusers, felons, and the mentally ill from securing firearms in retail outlets, from dealers, or anyone else “engaged in the business” of selling guns. Hobbyists, gun collectors, and individual gun owners are exempt from the requirement for private sales. However the difference between the hobbyist selling firearms at a gun show or online and someone “engaged in the business” was left deliberately vague by Congress in the federal legislation establishing background checks. The law currently allows considerable leeway for gun show and online vendors not directly associated with a brick-and-mortar retail stores to avoid performing background checks. The loophole is no accident, and the Republican Congress has made it clear that it wants to keep it open. President Obama’s directives aim to tighten definitions and broaden the reach of background checks both at gun shows and online.

The gun lobby is absolutely correct that these measures won’t prevent guns from getting into the hands of determined criminals and others who pose a threat to society. But why should we persist in making it easy for them? Why not seize the initiative to move the conversation about gun safety into areas of greater potential and possibility, like expanded background checks, where nearly everyone outside of Washington is in agreement.