California shooting doesn’t fit Washington’s gun debate

He took that opportunity to reiterate calls for stricter gun control laws. The blood of the murdered wasn’t dry before politicians and pundits began exploiting the massacre to score political points, proffering vague solutions to a problem before all the facts have even come in.

Mr. Earnest said the president received another briefing Friday morning about the attack. House Deomcratic leader Mark Pafford says that he doesn’t see America’s latest mass shooting slowing any gun momentum in the Capitol. But she said is is concerned about allowing anyone – including non-U.S. citizens- to carry a concealed weapon without a permit, especially in public areas where families and children frequent.

Hillary Clinton was talking gun control in Orlando shortly before the California attack.

“It is possible that this was terrorist-related, but we don’t know”, Obama said. “It does raise some serious questions about how we need to be protecting ourselves”.

That is a far more complex debate with fewer clear-cut policy prescriptions.

President Barack Obama has condemned the California shooting that killed 14 people and injured 17, saying that the pattern of mass shootings in the USA has no parallel anywhere in the world and reiterated his call for more gun control reforms, reports PTI. For Republicans, the issue could become quick campaign fodder — although they risk politicizing a national security threat, without offering a clear alternative.

Obama has tried to walk a fine line in the discussion in, mindful of an ongoing investigation and shifting circumstances.

A pair of Democratic measures – one to close background check loopholes to make it harder for felons and the mentally ill from buying guns, another to ban those on the terror watch list from buying guns – both went down in flames against near-unanimous GOP opposition.

Meanwhile, in New Hampshire, Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio said background checks would not have helped prevent the California killings.

Now let’s use a year for which we have complete data on gun violence, 2013. On the same day that Americans were buying guns in record numbers, three people were shot to death at a Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado Springs.

“At this stage, we do not yet know why this bad event occurred”, President Obama said during remarks Thursday at the White House. The San Bernardino shooters had high power guns, body armor, and armor piercing bullets.

Specifically addressing the “no-fly” background check proposal floated by Obama Wednesday, Earnest conceded it wouldn’t likely have had an effect based on information investigators had gathered in San Bernardino. But I do know that while thoughts and prayers are important, they are insufficient and it is long past time for action.

Searching for a rebuttal to the Democrats’ case on guns, Republicans have zeroed in on mental health.

“The last thing we want to do is rush to judgment to quote unquote do something and then not actually solve anything”, adds Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan.