President Obama said “our thoughts and prayers aren’t enough” as he spoke just hours after a deadly shooting at an Oregon community college that has left 13 dead.
Obama said shootings have become business as usual and pushed for new gun control laws.
“Anybody who does this has a sickness in their minds,” Obama said. “We are the only advanced country that sees these mass shootings every few months. The United States of America is the one advanced nation on earth that doesn’t have sufficient, common sense gun safety laws, even in the face of repeated mass killings…Somehow this has become routine.”
Obama then listed multiple mass shooting sites like Aurora, Columbine, and Newtown, subsequently pushing for more gun control legislation.
“It can not not be this easy for someone who wants to inflict harm on other people to get his or her hands on a gun…Right now I can imagine the press releases being cranked out-“we need more guns,” they’ll argue, fewer gun safety laws” does anybody really believe that? Their are scores of responsible gun owners in this country, they know that’s not true… There is a gun for roughly every man, woman, and child in America. So how can you with a straight face make the argument that more guns will make us safer? We know that states with the most gun laws tend to have the fewest deaths.”
Obama then defended making the tragedy a political issue while seeming to belittle Americans killed by terrorist attacks.
“This is something we should politicize,” Obama said. “I would ask news organizations-have news organizations tally up the number of Americans killed through terrorist attacks this past decade and the number of Americans killed by gun violence and post them side by side in your news reports.”
Obama says he’ll continue to speak out on the issue.
“Each time this happens I am going to bring this up,” Obama said. “I hope and pray that I don’t have to come out again to offer my condolences to families in these circumstances.”
He then prayed for “change” as he concluded.
