A plan by President Barack Obama to require background checks for people buying firearms at gun shows, flea markets or online, is getting a mixed reaction from local residents. Taking the microphone at a live town hall meeting hosted by CNN, Corban recounted her experiences after being raped in college. Taya Kyle, whose late husband was depicted in the film “American Sniper“, asked the president about why he doesn’t highlight falling murder rates.
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It took Anderson Cooper’s prodding about the amorphous sense of gun-rights advocates that Obama’s true intent is to ultimately take people’s guns away for the president to drop his professorial persona and turn angry.
“The NRA has convinced many of its members that somebody’s going to come grab your guns, which is by the way, really profitable for the gun manufacturers”.
“Our position is consistently mischaracterized”, Obama said. “I’m only going to be here for another year”. I don’t know – when – when would I have started on this enterprise, right?
NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam said beforehand that the group saw “no reason to participate in a public relations spectacle orchestrated by the White House”. And the NRA pushed back on Twitter in real time, noting at one point “none of the president’s orders would have stopped any of the recent mass shootings”. Rather, the dealer to whom the gun was mailed calls the buyer and the buyer then comes into the store to go through a background check before the gun is passed to him.
He has blamed lawmakers for being in the thrall of the powerful National Rifle Association gun lobby group. Candidates like Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and business mogul Donald Trump released statements accusing the president of trying to take away citizens’ rights.
“There’s a very serious concern in this country about personal security”, he added.
The actions contained no executive orders, the best known and most formal exercise of unilateral presidential authority – only a presidential memorandum asking federal agencies to study smart gun technology.
His promise to “get rid of gun-free zones on schools” drew loud cheers from the crowd. With tongue planted firmly in cheek, Kelly asked, “I’d like you to explain, with 350 million guns in 65 million places, households from Key West to Alaska… if the federal government wanted to confiscate those objects, how would they do that?” “That’s bait”, Trump told the crowd.
He made a similar argument in response to a question from Arizona Sheriff Paul Babeu, who said that the executive actions wouldn’t have prevented the mass shootings that prompted much of Obama’s push for greater gun control. Right? I come from the state of Illinois, which, we’ve been talking about Chicago but Downstate Illinois is closer to Kentucky than it is to Chicago, and everybody hunts down there, and a lot of folks own guns, and so this is not like alien territory to me. Just after his 2012 re-election, Obama pushed hard for a bipartisan gun control bill that collapsed in the Senate, ending any realistic prospects for a legislative solution in the near term.
Pennsylvania physicians encourage President Obama to continue to support and expand public health campaigns that address the important aspects of gun safety nationwide.
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In an opinion column published Thursday in The New York Times, Obama said he would refuse to support any candidate, even a fellow Democrat, if he or she does not support tighter gun laws.
