Oregon Shootings Renew Gun Debate

“It will require that the American people, individually, whether you are a Democrat or a Republican or an Independent, when you decide to vote for somebody, are making a determination as to whether this cause of continuing death for innocent people should be a relevant factor in your decision”, Obama said.

In office, the guns issue has been much more nettlesome than it appeared during the 2008 presidential campaign, when Obama said it should be possible to get illegal guns off the streets and prevent them from falling into the hands of the mentally ill.

“I’ve asked my team, as I have in the past, to scrub what kind of authorities we have to enforce the laws that we have”, Obama said.

The student and Army veteran who witnesses say charged the shooter at a community college in Oregon is alert and awake at the hospital as he recovers.

But he said it would be up to voters to demand more significant changes from Congress, which he said was in the thrall of the National Rifle Association, a powerful gun lobby group.

Bonacci said he supports the right to bear arms but draws the line at the right to buy or carry automatic weapons. “We want something to happen here”.

Do not pay attention to lawmakers and other public officials who tell you now is not the time to discuss what to do about gun violence in America, what to do about changing gun laws to protect Americans.

Obama’s press conference comes a day after he delivered blistering remarks about gun control. John Rosenthal, with Stop Handgun Violence, asks, “Why they allows guns to be sold without IDs and background checks across this country”. Take me inside the atmosphere in Washington.

“The main thing I’m going to do is I’m going to talk about this”, Obama said. I called it the reality of gun violence. “If they said “other” or didn’t answer, they were shot elsewhere in the body, usually the leg”.

Increasingly, gun-reform advocates are turning away from the impasse at the federal level to the states – eight of which have now introduced expanded criminal background checks on private gun sales. “We become numb to this”. “What are we going to do?”

He also posted on his Facebook page a widely circulated video that claimed Sandy Hook was perhaps launched by the government wanting to take away guns from citizens: “That makes me wonder who we can trust anymore”. “What I’ve encouraged is we get started on that work immediately and we push through over the next several weeks and try to leave out extraneous issues that may prevent us from getting a budget agreement”.

“The shooter was lining people up and asking if they were christian”, tweeted Bodhi Looney, who said her grandmother was in the room as the shooting unfolded.