Obama decries ‘routine’ response of country to shootings

But yet again, on Thursday, a sad, somber and angry Obama walked before the cameras to bemoan another community traumatized by a mass killing.

In accordance to reports, 10 have been killed & 20 injured when a gunman opened fire at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon. He’s traveled to Aurora, Colorado; Tucson, Arizona; Charleston, South Carolina, and numerous other cities to mourn victims of gun violence.

The sheer frequency of these terrible events is intolerable, and as the president noted, they happen far more often here than in any advanced country that’s not in a war zone.

“Somehow”, he continued, “this has become routine”. The reporting is routine, my response here at this podium ends up being routine.

But we don’t have to wait to know that one factor in the tragedy that unfolded on this college campus is the all-too-easy availability of guns in this country.

Expressing sorrow and angst for grieving victims and their families for the 15 time during his presidency following a domestic shooting incident, this time in Oregon, the president voiced exasperation with Congress, irritation with the news media, and determination to campaign for new laws he said a president can not accomplish alone, but which require the collective will and “courage” of voters, including gun owners.

“This is a political choice we make”, Obama said.

Obama and Vice President Joe Biden made a concerted push for broad gun control reforms after the 2012 Newtown, Connecticut, school shooting of young children that shocked the country, but were unsuccessful.

It’s highly unusual for a president to compare his own nation unfavorably to others.

Oregon is above average among the 50 states in terms of gun regulation, according to Laura Cutilletta, a senior attorney at the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, a leading advocacy group in California. “It is relevant to our common life together, to the body politic”, he said.

We will learn the names of those who were killed and hear about their hopes and dreams and the people grieving their loss.

“We can actually do something about it, but we’re going to have to change our laws”, said a stony-faced Obama. “I would like us to be absolutely determined, as I am, to try to do something about this”, Clinton said.

In fact, he admitted there is nothing he can do. “We know that states with the most gun laws tend to have the fewest gun deaths”, he said. “I’m going to be pushing this issue”, she said.

“And I would particularly ask America’s gun owners who are using those guns properly and safely, to hunt, for sport, for protecting their families, to think about whether your views are being properly represented by the organisations that are speaking for you”, he said.