Obama Considers Executive Action on Gun Background Checks

On the same day President Obama travels to visit with the Umpqua Community College shooting victims' families, the White House says he is considering using his executive authority to create new background check requirements.

In a news conference last week, the president said he directed his team "to scrub what kinds of authorities do we have to enforce the laws that we have in place more effectively to keep guns out of the hands of criminals."

"Are there additional actions that we can take that might prevent even a handful of these tragic deaths from taking place?" the president said. "This will not change until the politics change and the behavior of elected officials changes, and so the main thing I'm going to do is I'm going to talk about this on a regular basis, and I will politicize it because our inaction is a political decision that we are making."

An administration official said examining a potential executive action on background checks "is part of that process" the president requested.

The White House is considering an executive action to create new background check rules for people purchasing guns from dealers selling a large quantity of guns, as first reported by the Washington Post.

The announcement came as the president prepared to sit down with families of the victims of the Umpqua Community College shooting in Roseburg, Oregon today. The visit has created some controversy in the area with at least one victim's family saying they will not attend the meeting.

"On principle, I find that I am in disagreement with his policies on gun control, and therefore, we will not be attending the visit," Stacy Bolan, whose daughter was shot and survived the shooting, told Fox News Channel.

Get real-time updates as this story unfolds. To start, just "star" this story in ABC News' phone app. Download ABC News for iPhone here or ABC News for Android here.