Another complication in the USA is that nothing seems to be made law by Washington, each state makes their own laws so you could get 50 different laws regarding gun usage. At least, that's what it seems to me.
You have to wonder what does the President actually do? Any directive appears to be either implemented or rejected by the different state governments.
Col
Col, many people do not understand the USA form of government even as it was intended, but let's not talk about what it has become. I will try to help you understand what goes on here.
The US Constitution defines three sets of rights.
The first set of rights belongs to the federal (national) government. This includes the right to make treaties, establish governmental agencies with federal scope, coin money, raise an army, manage interstate commerce, and a few other things. There is a clause that says the federal government has the exclusive right to do the things enumerated as its powers. The states are not supposed to step in on federal issues. In this mix, it is CONGRESS that makes laws, not the president.
The second set of rights belongs to the states because the term "United States of America" is not window dressing. It is a functional term, because technically we were formed as an ALLIANCE of states that granted some powers to form a federal government (see previous paragraph). Think of the European Union as a corresponding structure. Many powers were explicitly reserved to the states by the US Constitution. Your comment about 50 different laws (you said "on guns" but it is actually on damned near any subject) is spot-on. Driving age, marriage age, various kinds of taxes, criminal and civil law, and even labor law to some degree are all in the range of state laws. My home state of Louisiana, because of its French heritage, still has vestiges of the Napoleonic Code as oppose to common English law roots. However, it has mostly adopted U.S. Common Business Code for most things. Our inheritance laws still more strongly protect the family than some states do.
The third set of rights are those rights explicitly granted to the people. The first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution came into being because the representatives to the first Continental Congress (that started to form the new government in the late 1700s) could not secure enough votes until they placed certain hard-and-fast guarantees in writing. Those first 10 amendments enumerated rights and protections belonging to the people and theoretically not removable by the government.
Now, back to the issue of guns. Your concerns intertwine with the 2nd amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which includes a clause "The right of the people to keep and to bear arms shall not be infringed." We are currently involved in probably dozens of state-vs-federal lawsuits in which states have tried to set up regulations on gun ownership, but this is one of those issues that is a legal mine-field due to that originally absolutist language. We COULD amend the constitution but nobody has succeeded in making an amendment that would curtail gun rights.
You also asked about what the President does. I will avoid the typical snarky comments about our current president and give a more general answer. The president's duty is that when Congress proposes a law, he is supposed to verify that proper procedures were followed and then he can sign the proposed law into full legal force. Or he can refer the proposed law to the court system if he believes there is a legal conflict. The president also oversees the actions of various executive-branch agencies that help him in whatever those agencies do. He is the commander-in-chief of ALL federal military forces and can issue commands for rapid response to an act of war. He has a few other enumerated powers and responsibilities such as appointing federal judges subject to Congressional approval.
