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Obama on Oregon Shooting: ‘This Is Something We Should Politicize’
President Obama delivered an angry statement on the Thursday shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, OR. “Each time we see one of these mass shootings,” he said from the White House briefing room podium, “our thoughts and prayers are not enough.
In a 15-minute statement, Obama stressed that the US is “the only advanced country on Earth that sees these kinds of mass shootings every couple of months.” He praised the gun control efforts in Australia, a nation that conducted a mass confiscation of firearms from its citizenry.
The President repeatedly complained about the Republican-led Congress and gun rights advocates. “There is a gun for roughly every man, woman, and child in America,” he said, “so how can you with a straight face say more guns will make us safer?”
Obama claimed that states with the most gun laws tend to have the fewest gun deaths and repeatedly called for “common-sense” gun safety legislation. “Somebody somewhere will comment and say, ‘Obama politicized this issue.’ Well, this is something we should politicize,” the President said.
Instead of offering a plan of his own, Obama told voters to change American politics on the issue. He even requested that the media make gun control more popular.
“I would ask news organizations — because I won’t put these facts forward — have news organizations tally up the number of Americans who’ve been killed through terrorist attacks over the last decade and the number of Americans who’ve been killed by gun violence, and post those side-by-side on their news reports. It won’t be information coming from me, it’ll be coming from you,” the President said, pointing to reporters in the room.
Published in Guns
I seem to remember seeing a documentary on TV that showed a whole lot of weapons that were much more sophisticated than plain old muskets were around in those days. For example, single trigger pistols, with side by side, and also under and over barrels, were made in 1789, and the Ferguson rifle, designed in 1774, was the first English breech-loading rifle made for military use. Never developed beyond an initial order of 100 rifles because it was expensive to make.
Wait, is this the crisis of Islamic terrorists, or immigrants, or what?
And is the government going to need to train all of us to resist the threat, whatever it is? What’s the program, here?
Okay, I’m confused. You might need to document that Safetyland (the U.S.) is the laughing stock of the developed world. As far as I know, if the other parts of at least the Western-Civ portion of the developed world are laughing, it’s because they think we have too many guns (and aren’t noticeably more polite than, say, Danes) rather than too few.
Hah! So if I suggest we go with original intent, and allow all Americans to have any “arm” available to the founding fathers (disallowing ordnance!) there would be choices?
Bear in mind the origination of the Second Amendment lies in the populace being able to defend themselves from their own government. That has its roots in the events of England in the prior century when James II armed Catholic supporters, and the Protestants made sure to include a right to bear arms in the Bill of Rights of 1689 after he was overthrown. There obviously has to be a line somewhere (no nukes for my neighbors, for example) which is part of the English tradition, but the line should not per se be drawn at personal protection against a home invasion or recreational hunting when considering the types of arms that should be licit.
Kate,
Again you are emotionalizing this issue. Automobiles kill over 50,000 people per year. The government does not pay for your sophisticated training you do. None of the problems you state are without simple measures to counter that are low in cost and readily available. I have no government program in mind.
This is the free country that didn’t fall for Communism or Fascism. This is the free country that fought both. I don’t think the second amendment is an accident or an anachronism.
No kidding Kate. Why don’t you watch Japan surprising us at Pearl Harbor or Nazi Germany surprising France. Evil often gets the drop on good. That’s why good people need to hang onto their faith. Their faith is sure to be tried.
Sorry that I don’t have any guarantees. The only guarantee is that if good people don’t commit themselves to fight evil then evil will grow. Churchill said to Great Britain “I have nothing to offer you but blood sweat toil and tears”. Are we so spoiled that we would give in to a parasite like Obama and his soulless gdless stooges because out of 300 plus million people there are a few who are deranged.
I don’t need to present some magic solution or magic training program. You are not a child anymore. What gives you the right to demand a child like assurance from some vague government source using some specious social scientific justification. Sorry Kate but why don’t you just grow up. Evil exists, either fight it or stand aside and let those who can fight it do so.
Regards,
Jim
My take on that, which I don’t think is the way to interpret the Constitution, is that the founders knew that there would be improvements in arms, which they had seen in their own lives. They meant, I believe, that the people should be able to have the arms necessary to protect themselves and the state, and that would mean being as well-armed as the enemy, not as well armed as the enemy in 1791. It wouldn’t do for the Indians against whom we waged war well into the 19th century to have repeating rifles while the western settlers were only allowed to have muskets.
Those liberals who think that the 2nd amendment only protects muskets should agree that the 1st amendment only protects the printed word.
I was actually trying to be funny.
In my small way, I do fight it, James.
And, as I say, I respond to the scenes of violence and see what guns can do; I touch the bodies of murder victims and attempt to comfort the survivors—of children as well as adults (male and female). I don’t mean to be melodramatic, here, only to say that the reason my LEO friends are willing to put up with me in spite of my “emotionalism” is that I get blood (and, for that matter, brains) on my hands.
While it is, of course, possible that you have more direct experience of murdered bodies and screaming mothers than I have, I nonetheless venture to suggest that my experience, while not that of shooting people myself, nonetheless qualifies me as, in some real sense, a grown up.
I’m certainly not a child anymore. I’m a middle aged mother of six. Nonetheless, it is the function of government to protect its citizens specifically from violence and the threat of violence to the best of its ability. I am open to the possibility that further restrictions on the availability of guns is not the way to go, but I’m not especially impressed by the ad hominem quality of your arguments. I can only hope that the aggressive nature of your remarks indicates you would be equally aggressive should we happen to be in the same room when the jihadis or nut cases burst in. Don’t worry—I’ll have your back.
Kate: we all appreciate the job you do. But I am sure I am not the only one on Ricochet who has been to the funeral of someone killed by violence. So please don’t behave as though we are all living in a safe bubble and our lives have been untouched. It’s not the case.
In a way you remind me of friends I have had over the years. One in particular worked as a nurse in a cancer ward and anything that could cause cancer, ie sun, cigarettes, were a constant focus of attention and fear for her. Her kids weren’t allowed out to play unless they were completely slathered in sunscreen, wearing a hat, etc. And when one of her sons began smoking she practically started grieving. In her mind it was just a matter of time before she would be shopping for a casket.
Being surrounded by a particular threat makes one unrealistically nervous about that threat. For all the gun violence there is, there are millions and millions of guns in the hands of millions and millions of Americans that don’t cause unwarranted violence or tragedy.
As I said hundreds of comments ago, this is not a gun problem. It’s a lot more complicated than that. Those who commit mass shootings aren’t just anyone who got their hands on a gun.
We should be spending our energy on figuring out the criminal, not his choice of tools.
Definitely true. Absolutely, positively. I’m also pretty freaky about personal floatation devices…and helmets…
And I am absolutely sure a snowmobile is just a death machine.
But when it comes to unrealistic nervousness; arguing that we should all be armed, and/or prepared to fight (both of which require expenditures of money and effort) isn’t exactly displaying a lack of nervousness. That is, Man With An Axe and James aren’t arguing the threat doesn’t exist—indeed, they claim it’s getting worse, and that we’re soon going to be encountering ISIS at the mall rather than the local loonie—-and we need to be prepared as individual Americans to meet force with force.
We can’t really have it both ways. Either the threat of being the victim of a violent crime is sufficiently severe to warrant having a gun in my bedside table and on my middle-aged hip, prepared to use it effectively 24/7, and thus the 2nd Amendment is my guarantee that I can protect myself and my loved ones against genuine (not imaginary) threats… or it’s really not that big a deal, we don’t have to worry about gun violence because it’s sufficiently rare…in which case, why do I have to spend time and money getting armored up?
If I had to choose between addressing the availability of guns, and addressing the availability of mental health treatment, I’d choose to concentrate on the mental health part.
Thank you, Annefy!
I wasn’t saying that I am unique. Only countering the impression (unpleasantly expressed, if I may say so) that I’m an ivory-tower critic of a phenomenon I don’t actually have to encounter in the (cooling) flesh.
This is really cool, Whiskey.
I remember suggesting (back when I was a college feminista, in favor of banning porn) that if we outlawed all pornography except written pornography (e.g. the sort of dirty novels that used to be sold in train station news stands) it would have the added benefit of encouraging literacy among the general —well, okay, mostly male—populace…
“Added benefit” meaning that the expected benefit would be that, deprived of the stimulus of pornographic movies, actual sexual violence would decrease. Since sexual violence appears to be decreasing despite an increase in the availability of pornography, my activism was—alas!— aimed at the wrong target. Fortunately, I wasn’t a very effective radical feminist.
Incidentally—since joining Ricochet, I have become increasingly sensitized to the ways in which liberals ignore, deny and re-assign evil (e.g. freaking out over Ferguson, and coolly ignoring the carnage in the inner-cities, decrying supposed “hate speech” on campuses but explaining away the genuine hate crimes committed by Islamists, etc. etc).
Actually, you could argue with me. I’m okay with self-defense, second amendment and liberty. Even if I do want to make it more difficult for the wrong people to get hold of guns (not “make sure” of it).
Anyway, thank you for the kind tone, Belt!
see next comment. But what I have to say responds to this.
As I also mentioned many comments ago: whether or not I have a gun is one thing. But I want everyone to think I might very well have.
My very liberal anti-gun friend (who could probably give you, Kate, a run for your money on carnage witnessed) wants to take away my gun. She wants to take away everyone’s guns. But she’s unwilling to put a sign on her porch that says “no guns here”.
All my relatives live in Scotland. I’ve lost count on how many of them have been the victims of “hot” burglaries. The burglars know there are people at home – and they don’t care. Because the burglars are 100% confident that there is no one armed at home.
And they also know that if by some chance the homeowner is armed, the law will probably go against the homeowner if he takes a shot.
The threat might not be enough for you and I to have a gun at our bedside, but let’s admit that it’s a real benefit that the bad guy isn’t sure.
This is true—but it is also true of terrorist attacks. We can always do this sort of thing, can’t we? You’re much more likely to die of X, so why worry about Y?
I think these mass shootings are frightening in the way that plane crashes are frightening. We know, intellectually, that we’re more likely to die in a car crash on the way to the airport, but we have a sense (illusory though not entirely so) that we can control many, even most of the elements that go into a car crash. We can wear a seatbelt, not drink and drive, obey speed limits, ignore the seductive beep of an incoming text. Our hands are on the wheel, and our wheels are on the ground.
Besides which, personal violence always feels different. If a meteor fell from space onto my head, my family would be sad, but no one would scream for justice. But when one human being attacks another, it is understood by everyone involved to be something other than a mere cause of death; it is the moral agency that makes it a crime, not the end result.
Murderers are motivated not by “evil” (like a James Bond villain) but by their own admittedly warped sense of moral outrage. “They disrespected me.” “She cheated on me.” “Their ancestors massacred our ancestors.”
When the moral outrage of the murderer is linked to religion (e.g. the Oregon shooter targeting Christians) we promptly declare that secular hostility to religion in the general culture is part of the problem (never mind that few secularists commit mass murder). When the motivation of the murderer is racist, liberals happily draw the same conclusion about the role of societal racism, while southerners are affronted at the idea. Still, when the murderer is an inner-city black thug, we are again willing to consider the contribution made by a dysfunctional culture to the tragedy.
So if (as has been the case in at least two of these massacres that I know of) the shooter was brought up in a family with an enthusiasm for guns, and they were all raised in a culture that offers first-person shooter games as entertainment, uses “cold, dead hands” rhetoric, and is pretty casual about regulating gun sales and use, what can we say about that? Might something we could call “gun culture” —that is, the way guns are talked about, depicted and described, especially in their relationship to moral categories like “respect” and “honor” — be part of the problem?
Yes—I’ve talked with some Irish game wardens who don’t carry guns, and the result is that they get jumped by bad guys all the time. Sometimes knifed. I’m surprised that homeowners armed with bats or other weapons aren’t a deterrent. Over on the thread about Valor, Viciousness and Victory (am I missing a V?) they’d probably call your relatives cowards for not picking up a chair and flinging it. I, on the other hand, would say they are probably prudent—especially since they appear to have survived thus far, which is a victory in itself.
I think the burglars might be deterred by the idea that there’s a gun in the house, if they assume the homeowner is also in the house and more or less ready to wield it. On the other hand, a cop friend of mine told me that heroin addicts actually look for houses with guns (e.g. with “house protected by Smith & Wesson” signs) and no car in the driveway, because a gun is a portable valuable, easily sold for cash. This might explain why, in states with high gun ownership, burglaries still take place. It all depends on the burglar’s own sense of the trade-offs…”he might be home, and he might wake up, and he might have a gun…on the other hand, I need a fix.”
I don’t want to take away your gun, Annefy. My guess is that any regime that I, as Queen of the World, would come up with would easily accommodate your gun-owership. anonymouss, too. And I’m even willing to believe that if Whiskey Sam or anonymous were present at the scene of a mass-murder, they might have a chance (slim, but better than none) of helping out. In fact, if I were Queen of the World, the requirements for licensure would ensure that any legally-armed civilian was competent to at least do more good than harm.
Young people today have been raised in a truly dysfunctional and schizophrenic society. They are schooled to believe that America is the problem, not the answer. So instead of being grateful that they won the birth lottery, they are bitter about slights and sins that never had anything to do with them or are 100% imagined.
They are told at every step that they are wonderful, yet they are the victim of a pathetic school system that can’t get them to grade level in any subject. And they are smart enough to know that they have been ill served.
They see ultrasound pictures on the fridges of some, yet see our President and others defending not only the snuffing out of life, but taxpayers paying for it.
Religion? Well, with dedicated parents, they might have some positive exposure. But is that positive exposure enough to overwhelm the negative attitude every where else? (as a parent I’ve won some and I’ve lost some)
So what’s left? Fame. Being famous. Doesn’t matter what for.
Fame is the only thing these pathetic people are willing to die for.
It’s got nothing to do with guns.
Maybe I only see the results of incompetence? Or of competence coupled with madness?
(Sort of like the snowmobiles—I see the accidents, not all the perfectly happy, cheery, accident-free days of fun).
Not to nit-pick, but Jared Lee Loughner was stopped by brave but unarmed people. Of course, by then he’d already shot Congresswoman Giffords and a 9 year-old.
I’m sorry. I’ll try.
Incidentally, while I’ve got you—I woke up thinking: “I should really ask these guys, who clearly know a lot more than I do for a book recommendation”
So if there was one book y’all would recommend to someone like me—reflexively, perhaps emotionally inclined to regard guns as a/the/part of the problem but open to discussion and definitely interested in the facts of this or any matter…what would it be?
Well, but we’re talking about guns, specifically, in this thread. I’m not saying that gun culture is the only issue (“inner city black culture” isn’t the only aspect of gang violence either) I’m just saying that it could be part of the issue, couldn’t it? And perhaps one amenable to more general correction—sort of the way cigarette smoking used to be normal and is now outré?
A dear friend of mine grew up in Tennessee. Though he lived in the suburbs of Nashville, there were guns in the house. He was given a gun as a present, with which he hunted squirrels in the backyard. There are a lot of photographs of him holding guns, with and without other family members.
As we got to know each other, which involved exchanging family stories, at one point I remember saying: “You know, you’ve told me two separate stories in which one family member points a loaded gun in anger at another family member.” He looked at me blankly. “Well, that’s odd. Isn’t it?” He shrugged, and said he’d never thought about it before.
For all the dysfunction in my family no one ever pointed a gun at anyone—it’s not that we were less screwed-up or irrational, it just never occurred to us.
My friend’s sister was the gun-toter in one of these stories. Overhearing an argument between her mother and her mother’s boyfriend, “I grabbed my rifle and ran upstairs naked.” For her, the significant part of the story—the hilarious part—was that she was naked.
For me, it was the “I grabbed my rifle.”
” Why on earth would it occur to you to grab your rifle?” I asked, and received the same, blank look. Like; doesn’t everyone grab their rifle when intervening in a family quarrel? Pressed, she admitted that she didn’t really think her mother was being physically menaced by her boyfriend, she just didn’t like his tone.
My friend’s brother, who turned out to be seriously screwed-up, at one point held several family members at gun-point while in an alcohol-infused rage. My friend was on a high school class trip, but spent half a day on the phone from the hotel, talking his brother out of a massacre. Nothing, incidentally, happened to the brother—no arrest for criminal threatening, etc. The teacher, who had to leave this boy in the hotel room all day, didn’t call the social workers. This was, admittedly, back in the day when people didn’t think in terms of “domestic violence” when it came to family fights—which may be part of the point, too?
Kate, could you please edit #193?
Thanks.