“When you decide to vote, this cause of continuing death for innocent people should be a relevant factor in your decision.”
– President Barack Obama
“There’s been another mass shooting in America,” President Barack Obama, in what likely was the most angered, angst-ridden, and unreserved press conference he has held to date, said in response to today’s Umpqua Community College shooting that left ten dead and another seven wounded.Â
“That means there are more American families, moms, dads, children, whose lives have been changed forever. That means there’s another community stunned with grief and communities across the country forced to relieve their own anguish, and parents across the country who are scared because they know it might have been their families or their children.”
Speaking just hours after this latest, the 15th, mass shooting of his presidency, President Obama, as he has numerous times before during his tenure, expressed, unscripted his grief.
“So we know there are ways to prevent it. And of course, what’s also routine is somebody somewhere will comment and say, ‘Obama will politicize this issue.’ Well, this is something we should politicize. It is relevant to our common life together, to our body politic.”
“This is a political choice that we make to allow this to happen every few months in America,” the President told reporters. “We collectively are answerable to those families who lose their loved ones.”
“Somehow this has become routine. The reporting is routine. My response here at this podium ends up being routine,” a clearly frustrated president said. “We’ve become numb to this.”
“We’ve talked about this after Columbine and Blacksburg, after Tucson, after Newtown, after Aurora, after Charleston,” he continued, rattling off the names of cities forever changed by mass shootings. “It cannot be this easy for someone who wants to inflict harm on other people to get his or her hands on a gun,” he pleaded.
Challenging the NRA’s claim, the president said, “more guns” and “fewer safety laws” won’t make Americans safer.
“There is a gun for roughly every man woman and child in America…How can you with a straight face make an argument that more guns make us safer?”
President Obama urged all Americans to “think about” whether their “views are properly represented” by elected officials and to gun owners asked them to think if “the organization that suggests it’s speaking for you” – the NRA – actually is.
“I hope and pray that I don’t have to come out again during my tenure as president to offer my condolences to families in these circumstances,” the President said. “But based on my experience as president, I can’t guarantee that. And that’s terrible to say. And it can change.”
“Tonight as those of us who are lucky enough to hug our kids a little closer are thinking about the families who aren’t so fortunate, I’d ask the American people to think about how they can get our government to change these laws to save lives and let our young people grow up,” he urged.
In what appeared to be his only scripted remarks, the President asked God to “bless the memories of those who were killed today, may he bring comfort to their families, and courage to the injured as they fight their way back, and may he give us the strength to come together and find the courage to change.”
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Editor’s note:
At 7:54 PM ET the New York Times reports “Sheriff John Hanlin of Douglas County said that the gunman killed 10 people and wounded seven, adjusting initial reports from law enforcement officials, which counted 13 dead and 20 injured.”Â
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EARLIER:
Live Video: 13 Confirmed Dead In Umpqua Community College Shooting – Gunman Was 20 Year Old Male
BREAKING: At Least 10 Dead, 20 Injured In Shooting At Oregon Community College
Video and screenshot via MSNBC