Mr. Clintons announcement today is part of a broader effort by the administration to expand its gun-control efforts, Mr. Eizenstat said. Last month, Mr. Clinton said he would ask Congress for 500 more agents for the firearms bureau, which as a result of N.R.A. pressure over the years is no larger today than it was when it was established. The president is also expected to try to win passage this year of a bill to require background checks on all handguns sold at gun shows, a bill that passed the Senate last year but died in the House. Mr. Clintons announcement is to be accompanied by the release of what administration officials said would be the first in an annual series of comprehensive reports on the state of the gun industry. The report shows that about 4.5 million new guns are sold in the United States each year, but that the number of handguns has increased from only 10 percent of all firearms sales in the 1940s to more than 40 percent today.
Handguns account for the vast majority of gun deaths each year.
The number of federally licensed dealers surged to 284,117 in 1992 from 161,927 in 1975, largely during the Reagan and Bush administrations, making it harder for the A.T.F. to regulate the gun business, since its own number of agents did not increase, the report said. But after Mr. Clinton became president, and with tougher criteria to maintain a firearms license, the number dropped to 103,942 in 1999, of which 80,570 are actual gun stores or pawnshops and not people selling from their homes. But the report found that while 46 percent of the dealers had not sold a gun in the previous year in 1992, last year 31 percent of all gun stores and pawnshops reported they had not sold a gun in the past 12 months. That is too high a number, said an administration official. These kinds of dealers have the opportunity to buy large numbers of guns at wholesale prices and then sell them in the illicit market at a steep mark up.