kristin dahlgren, nbc news, new york. >>> the new year is gypping with an old debate. gun control versus gun rights. today president obama said he will bypass congress and consider executive action to violence. more now from nbc's ron allen. of shootings every year. killed. in the new year's address, the president put what he called the greatest frustration of his time in office, iz inability to do more to stop gun violence at the top of his list of unfinished business. >> last month we anniversary of newtown. this friday, i'll be thinking about my friend gabby giffords, five years into her recovery. >> reporter: the president will use his executive authority to tighten the nation's gun laws. like closing the so-called gun show and online loophole which allows purchases without background checks. and stopping people on terror watch lists, not allowed on airplanes, from buying guns guns. >> we know we can't stop every act of violence but what if we tried to stop one. what if congress did something to protect our kids from gun violence. an abuse of power. >> the presiden

i'm kristin dahlgren, back to you. >> news4 5:00 starts now with jim and wendy. >>> storm team 4. >> and the first flight out of washington, and this is the view. our nation's capital draped in winter white. >> live from chopper 4, the cleanup effort down below under way after the blizzard of 2016. but for some just getting out on the main roads has been a huge challenge. >> well, here is the latest on the aftermath of this winter storm. it's going to take some time, as you can imagine, to clean up, but there are signs of progress today. metro is now expanding its service and flights are back in the air at the region's major airports. >> but there is still a struggle this evening from the many sidewalks that have not been cleared properly to the mounds of snow that block intersections still, even entire lanes of roadways. travel conditions have forced many area school systems to cancel classes for another day tomorrow. >> and from maryland to virginia and the district, we have live team coverage tonight. >> our crews are stretched out all across our region this evening, and the focus

nbc's kristin dahlgren shows us why the delays could last even later into the week. >> reporter: hello from laguardia airport where there is a lot more activity than there has been over the past few days, but still difficult travel day for a lot of people. there's still a huge snow clearing operation going on at the runways. here at laguardia we are still seeing cancellations. about 30% of flights canceled for today. nationwide we're seeing more than 1500 flights canceled. so airports and airlines trying desperately to get back to normal but really a difficult task for them. they're still clearing the runways and, of course, when you think about it, more than 12,000 flights canceled between the time the storm started on friday and today. that is an awful lot of travelers that need to get rebooked and put on flights to where their final destination is, so we're still seeing a lot of people who say they won't get out until tomorrow, perhaps the next day or the day after that. and that with the possibility of another storm coming, it could be some difficult travel days ahead. that's the l

kristin dahlgren is at new york's laguardia airport. you have been speaking with some of the passengers. we spoke this morning. it was great to see over at least on the screen here on the left side there were folks finally back there working which meant they're trying to get people to where they need to go, and i understand that flights are now moving there. is that right? >> reporter: they are. what you can't see in the airport here is just this huge, huge effort to get the snow cleared off the runways, and they were able to open the run waips up today. unfortunately though, a lot of the airlines who had sent their planes away weren't able to get them back and get operations back up and running. we had a few flights going out, really limited service from lard why today. jetblue had maybe six or seven over the course of this entire afternoon that are going to be going out and then just delta had some flights as well. but if you look at american here, it's again empty. some people showed up trying to get on flights, but they were told am

we start with kristin dahlgren. talk about this ongoing issue of those folks that keep getting stranded. >> reporter: hey there, thomas. you have more than 12,000 flights cancelled and say an average of maybe 200 or so people on each of those flights. all those people need to get where they're going and have 70% of flights going out of laguardia today, it's a mess out of here. and trying to get to cincinnati, you have a really important reason to get there. >> yeah, i'm a med student and trying to get a residency interview which only happens a couple of months a year. if i miss this, it's a really big lull. >> reporter: when was the flight scheduled? >> 10:00 a.m. and then cancelled that. called me and told me it was cancelled and gave me an alternative 7 p.m. flight, which basically means i miss the interview. >> reporter: what do you do? >> i called up delta. i called up basically every airline that would listen, and no one had any flights available. >> reporter: good luck to you. hopefully you get there. what sch