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The Obama administration is announcing a series of executive steps aimed at curbing gun violence, including broader background checks and the hiring of additional specialists to process those checks. The White House is also proposing a $500 million investment to improve mental health care. (1/5)

President Barack Obama is directing administration officials to explore ways to expand the use of technology that can ensure a weapon can be fired only by its owner and proposed efforts to invest in mental-health care and include information in the background-check system about individuals who are prohibited from possessing a firearm for mental-health reasons. (Nelson and Fields, 1/5)

Some health providers, courts and state officials have been hesitant to share records because of strict privacy laws. As a result, the federal background check system, known as the NCIS, has significant gaps on people disqualified from owning guns because of mental illnesses. New rules issued Monday by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) are intended to make it clear that legal authorities can pass along mental health records that could be valuable in a background check. The rules from the Obama administration, to be published Tuesday, clarify that only limited information about the patient is shared – only a person’s name and the entity that made the ruling. (Ferris, 1/4)

Delivering on its promise to deliver "common sense" gun control, the Obama administration on Monday finalized a rule that enables health care providers to report the names of mentally ill patients to an FBI firearms background check system. While the 1993 Brady law prohibits gun ownership by individuals who have been involuntarily committed, found incompetent to stand trial or otherwise deemed by a court to be a danger to themselves or others, federal health care privacy rules prohibited doctors and other providers from sharing information without the consent of their patients. Under the rule, which takes effect next month, for the first time health providers can disclose the information to the background check system without legal repercussions. (Pittman, 1/4)

"The president is at minimum subverting the legislative branch, and potentially overturning its will," Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives Paul Ryan said in a statement before the White House announcement. Republicans have called for more focus on mental health care rather than measures to restrict gun ownership. The White House said it would ask Congress for $500 million in its 2017 budget to boost access to mental health care. (Mason and Rampton, 1/4)

A powerful House Republican is threatening to block President Obama’s executive order on guns by defunding the Department of Justice (DOJ). In a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Rep. John Culberson (R-Texas), chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee that oversees the Justice Department, warned against enforcing the new gun restrictions. (Devaney, 1/4)

Gun control has divided Democrats in the past, and Obama barely touched the issue in his first term. The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence gave him an “F” in 2009, calling his record an “abject failure.” Yet at the beginning of a year that Democrats hope will end with Hillary Clinton’s election as president and their party winning back control of the Senate, the party believes Obama’s actions will help it send the political message that Republicans are blocking common-sense reforms that would reduce the number of mass killings in the country. (Fabian, 1/5)