This is actually a very interesting statement. Did an Obama slip of the tongue indict illegal aliens as criminals by referring to "illegal (alien) drug runners"? If not his statement makes no sense as the only logical assumption would be that he wants to go after "illegal drug runners" as opposed to "legal" drug runners.
Another Obama end-run.
All increased background checks do is make it more difficult for law abiding citizens to legally purchase a gun. They do little or nothing to address criminals and criminal use of firearms.
The people who push for increased background checks are doing it as a stopgap measure because they haven’t been successful in completly banning on sme types of guns, ammunition and magazines.
Their real objective is not to reduce crime and violence, it is to impede legal gun ownership - to make it more difficult, costly, time-consuming and troublesome to purchase a gun.
Most background checks (an estimated 80% or more) are for buyers who already own one or more guns. If those buyers wanted to commit a crime with a legally owned gun they wouldn’t need to buy a new one.
So the vast majority of the money spent by the government on the NICS system to perform background checks is spent verifying that it is still okay for people who already own guns to buy another one.
The same people who whine that it is burdensome and an infringement of civil rights to ask a voter to provide a picture ID to vote think it is perfectly okay to force a gun purchaser to pay a fee, fill out a long form with many personal questions, present a photo ID and undergo a background check before being able to exercise their 2nd amendment right to purchase a gun.