President Obama, in Op-Ed, Says NRA Misleading Americans with Gun Spin

Two days after he announced executive actions aimed at curbing gun violence, President Barack Obama will appear on a nationally-televised town hall meeting to talk about them. “I only have another year!” “When would I have started on this enterprise?”

The president has said he’ll expand background checks, support the advancement of gun safety technology and improve mental health care in an effort to usher in greater gun control. The actions would be supported by an “overwhelming majority of the American people, including gun owners”, he said Monday.

The event took place at George Mason University, just 3 miles west of the NRA’s national headquarters in Fairfax, Va., a suburb of Washington, D.C.

Last year, following a series of mass shootings, Obama pledged to “politicise” the issue in an attempt to level the playing field for gun control supporters.

Anderson Cooper served as the host for the evening and asked the president some hard hitting questions regarding his plan and set of executive actions, which will remedy the “gun-show” loophole exploited by many sellers.

During Tuesday’s address from the White House, Obama denounced the argument that expanding background checks for gun buyers is not an effective way to prevent mass shootings.

Then Obama recollected the conversation he had once with Michelle while they were campaigning for presidency.

After his re-election in 2012, the President pushed for a bipartisan gun control bill, but that collapsed in the Senate.

The day before the event, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said, “The President has often said that we can disagree without being disagreeable”.

Obama also took questions from Cleo Pendleton, whose daughter was shot and killed near Obama’s Chicago home, and from Sheriff Paul Babeu, an Arizona lawman and congressional candidate who has accused Obama of unconstitutional power grabs on guns.

The president is also right when he says of the millions of peaceful, faithful, and law-abiding Muslim-Americans, that only a tiny fraction are zealous extremists bent on terror. “And if the 90 percent of Americans who do support common-sense gun reforms join me, we will elect the leadership we deserve”.

Obama is trying to make the case for tightening gun control rules, while fighting claims by opponents of such regulations that he’s trying to take away people’s Second Amendment rights.

President Obama said Thursday that while he and his wife Michelle Obama were campaigning in Iowa, the First Lady indicated that she would have wanted a gun if the couple lived in a rural area.