On the day before US President Joe Biden announced new gun control measures, the US recorded its seventh mass shooting for 2021.
The plans to announce the new measures were already in place before a former NFL player killed five people in South Carolina.
The shooting brought America's death toll from mass shootings in 2021 to 38, a problem Biden labelled "an epidemic, for God's sake".
His new rules were issued via executive order, a special power the US president can use to act without the approval of Congress.
But executive orders are limited and Biden's most ambitious goals would need to pass through the House of Representatives and the Senate.
"Each of these executive actions will start to address the epidemic of gun violence that has raged throughout the pandemic, and begin to make good on President Biden’s promise to be the strongest gun safety president in history," said John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety. .
Three shootings in February (in Florida, Oklahoma and Minnesota) left a total of 10 people dead.
On March 16, shootings at three spas in Georgia sparked outrage over violence directed at Asian Americans and left eight people dead.
After calling gun control the "greatest frustration" of his presidency, in 2016 Obama used his presidential powers to skip Congress and signed executive orders to tighten some loopholes on purchasing a gun and tighten some background checks, but the orders amounted to little tangible action to curb gun violence.
Donald Trump later reversed one of the orders, which stopped people with some mental health conditions from buying guns.
That law expired a decade later, and the US hasn't passed significant gun control measures since.
Just like his predecessor, Congress is likely to block any new gun control measures.
And executive action is one of the areas where the US Supreme Court can check the powers of the president by striking down orders it rules violate the Constitution
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