President Barack Obama opened 2016 by moving the federal government more deeply into the long-running fight over gun violence, directing agencies to tighten enforcement of existing firearms laws, expand the national background-check system and pursue gun-safety technology after Congress declined to enact broader legislation. The executive actions announced this week put federal agencies at the center of a debate Congress has been unable to resolve.

The most immediate operational change is a major expansion of the FBI unit that processes firearm background checks. The White House says the bureau will hire more than 230 examiners and other employees, increasing staffing for the National Instant Criminal Background Check System by roughly 50 percent. The administration also wants the system operating around the clock and modernized with help from the U.S. Digital Service.

The package announced Tuesday is not a sweeping new gun law. It is a collection of executive actions, regulatory steps, enforcement priorities and budget proposals intended to make federal firearms rules work more consistently. Its central argument is that people who are “engaged in the business” of selling firearms must obtain a federal license and conduct background checks regardless of whether they sell from a storefront, at gun shows or over the Internet.

That distinction immediately placed the president at the center of a familiar constitutional and political dispute: supporters say the administration is enforcing laws already on the books, while opponents say the White House is trying to achieve through executive power what it could not win from Congress.

A Background-Check System Under Pressure

The scale of the system helps explain the administration’s focus. The White House says the National Instant Criminal Background Check System received more than 22.2 million requests in 2015, an average of more than 63,000 a day. Licensed dealers generally must contact the system before completing a sale to a buyer.

The administration says hiring more than 230 additional personnel will reduce pressure on the system and help investigators finish difficult checks more quickly. It also wants the FBI to improve notifications to local authorities when people legally barred from possessing firearms attempt to buy them.

At the same time, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is clarifying when a seller crosses the line from private activity into the business of dealing firearms. The White House says there is no single numerical threshold. Frequency, quantity and the circumstances surrounding sales can all matter, and courts have upheld convictions involving only a small number of transactions when other evidence showed that a person was operating as a dealer.

That ambiguity is precisely where much of the political conflict lies. Federal law has long distinguished licensed dealers from people making occasional sales or disposing of firearms from personal collections. The administration is not imposing universal background checks by executive action. Instead, it is warning that location does not determine whether a license is required: an Internet seller or gun-show vendor can be a firearms dealer just as surely as a shop owner.

Enforcement Expands Beyond Gun Sales

The new initiative extends well beyond dealer licensing. Obama’s fiscal 2017 budget will seek funding for 200 additional ATF agents and investigators. The agency has also created an Internet Investigations Center to focus on illegal firearms trafficking online and is directing $4 million and additional personnel toward the National Integrated Ballistics Information Network, which helps law-enforcement agencies connect ballistic evidence across crimes and jurisdictions.

Another rule addresses guns lost or stolen while being shipped between licensed businesses. The administration says an average of 1,333 firearms recovered in criminal investigations in each of the past five years were traced to licensees that reported never receiving the weapons, even though the guns had not been reported lost or stolen. ATF is clarifying that the shipping licensee has responsibility to notify law enforcement when a firearm disappears in transit.

The White House is also moving to require background checks for people seeking certain weapons regulated under the National Firearms Act through trusts, corporations or other legal entities. According to the administration, applications involving such entities rose from fewer than 900 in 2000 to more than 90,000 in 2014.

Taken together, the measures show an administration concentrating on the machinery of federal gun enforcement: who qualifies as a dealer, which transactions trigger a check, how quickly the FBI can complete that check, how firearms are traced and how federal prosecutors and agents prioritize violations.

Mental Health and a $500 Million Proposal

The president is pairing those enforcement measures with a proposed $500 million increase in federal support for mental-health care. The White House says the money would be used to expand treatment capacity, strengthen the behavioral-health workforce and improve access to care for people with serious mental illness.

The administration is also moving to improve the flow of disqualifying records into the background-check system. The Social Security Administration plans a rulemaking process involving certain beneficiaries who, because of mental impairment, are unable to manage their benefits or have been found legally incompetent. The White House estimates that the relevant population could include records concerning about 75,000 people each year, while also promising a process through which individuals could seek relief from a firearms prohibition.

The Department of Health and Human Services, meanwhile, is finalizing a rule intended to address state concerns about whether federal health-privacy rules prevent limited reporting to the background-check system.

At a televised town hall Thursday, Obama emphasized that mental illness should not be treated as synonymous with violence. He also pointed to suicide as a central part of the gun-death toll, saying roughly two-thirds of about 30,000 annual firearm deaths are suicides.

A Political Fight the White House Cannot End Alone

Obama has repeatedly acknowledged that executive action cannot create the broader system of universal background checks he sought after the 2012 killings at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Congress would have to legislate many of the changes gun-control advocates want.

What the White House can do is set enforcement priorities, add resources within existing authority, clarify legal obligations and begin regulatory processes under laws Congress has already enacted. That is why the administration describes its plan as both significant and limited.

Republican leaders and gun-rights organizations dispute that characterization. House Speaker Paul Ryan and other Republicans have accused the president of executive overreach, while gun-rights advocates say the actions could burden lawful sellers and owners without stopping criminals. Opponents are also looking toward Congress, the courts and the 2016 election as possible checks on the administration’s approach.

Obama, for his part, has tried to frame the dispute around a narrower proposition. He says he accepts the individual right protected by the Second Amendment but argues that background checks and other safety measures can coexist with lawful gun ownership. At Thursday’s town hall at George Mason University, he repeated that position while facing questions from gun owners and people who doubted that additional rules would have stopped past mass killers.

That exchange captured the central problem confronting the country at the start of 2016. There is broad agreement that violent criminals and other prohibited buyers should not have firearms. There is far less agreement about where private ownership ends and federal regulation begins, how much discretion the executive branch should exercise, or whether additional checks will substantially change the level of violence.

The administration’s actions do not settle those questions. They do, however, ensure that the first major domestic policy fight of the new year will be fought not only in Congress and on the presidential campaign trail, but through the federal agencies that license dealers, run background checks, trace crime guns and enforce the laws already on the books.