U.S. President Barack Obama is proposing a plan to ban a type of armor piercing bullet via executive order, one of many presidential orders he will likely issue in his last two years in office, experts said.

The administration wants to ban .223 M855 "green tip" ammunition because the bullet can pierce the body armor worn by law enforcement agents, and the White House wants to issue a controversial executive order to make the ban happen.

Critics said the bullet proposal, if made into law, would make bullets more expensive and make it more difficult for poor people in high crime neighborhoods to defend themselves, as the police cannot be everywhere at once.

Sociologists and criminologists said that violent crime and murders have dropped dramatically since the massive U.S. crime wave of the late 1980s and early 1990s, and that is largely the result of higher incarceration rates, not gun laws.

The National Rifle Association also said that many bullets can pierce armor, and believes the law is directed at restricting people's constitutionally guaranteed rights to bear arms.

Law enforcement groups such as the National Association of Police Organizations said the ban does not make sense, but others in law enforcement supported the ban.

The Obama administration believes that law enforcement should be protected from such bullets, and said the ban is aimed at keeping police officers and other law enforcement out of harm's way.

In a rebuff to the Republican Party after it took control of Congress in November's elections, Obama indicated that he would use executive orders when available to pass his agenda, fueling critics' contentions that some orders could skirt the Constitution.

"There will be plenty of additional executive orders," Dan Mahaffee, an analyst with the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress, told Xinhua, noting that Obama has promised to take action where he can by pen and by phone in a bid to fight perceptions of being a "lame duck."

But that will further enrage the Republican Congress, which has been locked in a bitter partisan rivalry with the White House practically since day one of the Obama presidency, and underscores the starkly different world views held by each side.

The Obama administration has looked at many areas it wanted to address in Obama's second term, and gun issues have been one of them.

"The president has asked his team to examine the array of executive authorities that are available to him to try to make progress on his goals...the president is very interested in this avenue generally," White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest recently told reporters.

That may include raising taxes, which has raised hackles among Republicans and other critics who contend that passing a tax hike with the stroke of a presidential pen oversteps Constitutional limits on presidential authority.

"It's generally the case that presidents facing a Congress controlled by the opposing party look for ways to influence policy without Congress," Christopher Galdieri, assistant professor at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire, told Xinhua.

U.S. presidents, regardless of party, tend to push the boundaries of past practice when they think it is necessary, and so each president inherits a presidency "that's at least a little bit more powerful than it was when the previous president took office," he said.