Within the American polity there is a cyclical requiem in the wake of each mass shooting – a predictable collective lament for a calamity that ostensibly everyone regrets and nobody can resolve.
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Obama reiterated his frustration at the failure of the Republican-controlled Congress to back new gun control measures, and threw down the gauntlet to lawmakers.
The first thing customers entering the Roseburg Gun Shop see is a life-sized cardboard cutout of President Barack Obama with a Middle Eastern scarf around his head and a badge pinned to his chest that reads: “Gun salesman of the year”.
“Do you think all these guys since Obama became president would have gone to a school and shot everybody if they knew every teacher had (a gun)?” The reporting is routine. This includes 350 deaths overseas, numbers that were provided by the US State Department.
He explained that he couldn’t even imagine why this individual did what he did, but he can obviously say that anybody who could do this has a sickness in his mind.
People supporting the right to bear arms were found to be dominantly white men, more likely to be politically conservative, Republican and who have not graduated from university. Obama himself said there’s a special category if it’s a terrorist.
It is long overdue that the legislative and executive branches of the U.S. implement better policies on who can possess a gun.
Obama exhorted gun owners to question whether the gun lobby represented their views. “He’s politicizing his anti-gun agenda”. He did not mention the NRA by name, but his comments were clearly directed at that group, which has broad political influence in Washington.
“I suspect this is going to start a discussion across the country about how community colleges prepare themselves for events like this”, said former college president Joe Olson. He added, “Unless we change that political dynamic, we’re not going to be able to make a big dent in this problem”.
“We’re in a hard time in our country, and I don’t think more government is necessarily the answer to this”, Bush said.
The topic could feature in the 2016 presidential election.
Obama said that those who favor more gun control must become single-issue voters. These are regulations that hunters accept, and even embrace, because they’re part of what makes our hunting heritage possible.
Obama said he would continue to press for reform every time such a shooting takes place until he leaves office in 2017.
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He also said he doubted that the national debate on gun control after Sandy Hook shooting would lead to any significant legislation.
