After Thursday’s mass shooting at an Oregon community college, which left nine people dead and more injured, President Obama aired his frustration over gun laws in the U.S. At a news conference Friday, he called on voters to push their representatives to take action.
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We didn’t hear much “heartache and grief” in his speech, but his anger was palpable.
Obama had encouraged the media Thursday to compile and release data on school shootings.
Now, within the subset of liberals I can guarantee you there are a few buffalo’ed, innocent, ignorant, standard, ordinary, every day Americans who mistakenly believe in the goodness of their hearts that taking guns away from people will make us safer.
“And maybe say that we would not give this guy’s name on the air, that we wouldn’t put his picture up on the air because when you glorify these killers, and again in a deranged mind, it’s glorification for them to get the publicity and the notoriety. My response here at this podium ends up being routine”, he said. We analyzed roughly 4,000 speeches and official remarks listed on the White House website and counted the number of speeches that contained selected words related to terrorism and to gun violence.
He said other nations also have mentally ill residents who want to harm others, but the United States is alone in the type of problem it faces. “Friends of ours, allies of ours – Great Britain, Australia, countries like ours”.
“Guns don’t kill people”, Williams said. Obama, however, said it did not make sense to argue that the Constitution prevented sensible reforms.
An overwhelming majority of Americans – 85 percent – favor stricter background checks for gun purchases and 57 percent a ban on assault-style weapons, the Pew Research Center found in August.
Obama exhorted gun owners to question whether the gun lobby represented their views. He asked each American to consider if their lawmakers and “the organization that suggested its speaking for you” are doing their jobs. He said he knew his opponents would criticize him for politicizing a tragedy.
“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.
The topic could feature in the 2016 presidential election.
What he conveniently omitted is that Oregon had recently strengthened its laws on gun sales and is above average among the states on gun regulation.
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The president lamented how such events had become “routine” and cited the terrifying statistic that “there is a gun for roughly every man, woman and child in America”.
