It's been eight months since the deadly shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, but many parents are still being afraid for their children's safety.
Gallup released a new poll on Thursday as millions of children across the country return to school, asking 508 parents of children between kindergarten and 12th grade whether they feel their oldest child is at risk of violence in his or her school. The survey found that 33 percent of those parents fear for their child's safety, the same percentage as when this question was asked after 26 children and teachers were massacred at the Newtown, Conn., school in December 2012.
After the shooting, President Obama and many Democratic leaders attempted to pass several bills related to gun safety, including a ban on assault rifles, stricter background checks, harsher penalties for illegal gun trafficking, and new measures for school safety. All of them failed because of opposition from Republicans who feared the measures would infringe on the Second Amendment and privacy rights of law-abiding citizens.
The president, instead, vowed to attempt to revive this debate later and, for the time being, pursue executive actions that he said would help protect children. On Thursday, the Obama administration revealed two more executive actions: one that closes a loophole to restrict access to some of the more dangerous weapons, including machine guns and short-barreled shotguns; and one that will deny requests to bring military-grade firearms back to the United States to private entities, with a few exceptions such as museums (since 2005, the government has allowed 250,000 of these weapons to come back to the U.S.).