A disgusted and angry President Obama responded to the shooting at Umpqua Community College in Oregon by calling out the right and demanding the American people politicize the gun violence issue before more innocent lives are lost.
The President has finally had enough of the right wing of the US enabling the culture of mass shootings.
President Obama said:
Somehow this has become routine. The reporting is routine. My response here at this podium ends up being routine. The conversation in the aftermath of it. We’ve become numb to this. We talked about this after Columbine, and Blacksburg, after Tuscon, after Newtown, after Charleston. It can not be this easy for somebody who wants to inflict harm on other people to get his or her hands on a gun.
And what’s become routine, of course, is the response of those who oppose any kind of common sense gun legislation. Right now, I can imagine the press releases being cranked out. We need more guns; they’ll argue. Fewer gun safety laws.
Does anybody really believe that?
There are scores of responsible gun owners in this country. They know that’s not true. We know because of the polling that says the majority of Americans say we should be changing these laws, including the majority of responsible gun owners. There is a gun for every man, woman, and child in America. So how can you with a straight face make the argument that more guns will make us safer?
…..
What’s also routine is that somebody somewhere will comment and say Obama politicized this issue. Well, this is something we should politicize. It is relevant to our common life together to the body politic.
I would ask news organizations because I won’t put these facts forward. Have news organizations tally up the number of Americans who have been killed through terrorist attacks in the last decade, and the number of Americans who have been killed by gun violence and post those side by side on your news reports. This won’t be information coming from me. It will be coming from you.
The President called out the Republican Congress for blocking the government from collecting data on how they could better prevent gun violence.
According to CBS’s Mark Knoller, this was the 15th time that President Obama has addressed the nation after a mass shooting. The President asked the American people to think about they can get our government to change these laws.
President Obama’s statement was bold and brave. He preemptively confronted the criticism that the right will throw at him. Obama vowed to bring up the need to change gun laws after every mass shooting.
The President was correct. It is a matter of common sense. How may innocent Americans have to die before the nation wakes up and demands that Congress stop protecting the profits of companies that manufacture guns?
The issue has nothing to do with the Second Amendment. No one is talking about taking guns away, but as a society we have a responsibility to make gun ownership more difficult for those who want to harm others.
At some point, the insanity must stop. The reality is that only the voters have the power to elect individuals who will not be owned by the gun industry. Obama can’t do it alone, but he is going to continue to fight to save innocent lives until the end of his term.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
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