The town hall came just two days after Obama announced executive actions designed, among other goals, to broaden the scope of gun sales subject to background checks.
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“Yes, that is a conspiracy”, Obama said.
Around 30,000 people are killed in America every year by guns, mostly in suicides.
“And by the way, there’s a reason why the NRA is not here”, Obama said. It’s the only time I’ve ever seen Secret Service cry on duty.
President Obama cried while listing all the schools where students have been shot, including Newtown, Connecticut, where twenty first-graders, aged 6 and 7, were killed in a mass shooting in 2012.
“Even as I continue to take every action possible as president, I will also take every action I can as a citizen”, he said in an opinion column published by the New York Times.
The town hall meeting Thursday night, is an invitation-only event that will be attended by around 100 representatives from gun rights and gun control groups, who will ask the president questions.
Obama told her, “There’s nothing we propose that it would make it harder for you to have a firearm”. He then noted that concealed carry laws are usually decided state by state. Last year, following a series of mass shootings, Obama pledged to “politicize” the issue in an attempt to level the playing field for gun control supporters. “Nothing”, said Felicia Thomas, Reed’s mother.
Earlier this week a tearful Obama said he would bypass Congress and take limited measures to tackle USA gun violence. I’m happy to talk to them. But he said the conversation would have to be based on facts, “not some imaginary fiction in which Obama is trying to take away your guns”. CNN is moderating the live town hall event.
Obama’s changes include guidance that anyone selling guns is a gun dealer, whether they have a brick-and-mortar store or not, and adding 230 new Federal Bureau of Investigation background-check examiners.
President Obama on Thursday evening slammed the National Rifle Association for rejecting opportunities to discuss gun violence with him.
Obama is set to participate in the invite-only event moderated by CNN’s Anderson Cooper.
“I think the president, frankly, is looking forward to talking to people on both sides of this issue”, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said at a press briefing Thursday afternoon.
“You have a president that views the Constitution as a stale and outdated document and so he habitually tries to undermine it, especially the Second Amendment”. The executive steps also expand the ATF, aim to improve mental-health treatment, and sponsor new research into gun-safety technology. It does seem obvious that this plan has been in the works for some time. “I reject that thinking”. “And it’s really important to acknowledge that we can’t just have one change and expect that to change things wildly”.
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Obama said he accepted CNN’s invitation to the town hall because his support for gun control is “consistently mischaracterized” by gun-rights advocates like the NRA. And for many years, nobody even cared about Chicago because the violence is primarily black and brown.
