President Obama Gets Emotional Talking About Gun Control

President Barack Obama shed tears Tuesday as he announced limited measures to tackle rampant United States gun violence and called on Americans to punish lawmakers who oppose more meaningful reforms.

“Every single year more than 30,000 have their lives cut short by guns”, the president said during a televised speech at the White House Tuesday. “It’s not even close”. So even if the rate of executive actions were a sign of “dangerous power grabs”, (though, again, they are not) the current POTUS isn’t really someone we should be concerned about.

Meanwhile, the administration is also beefing up law enforcement, streamlining the background check system.

In addition, the Defense, Justice and Homeland Security departments will research “smart gun technology” in the hope of preventing accidental shootings by children and to help identify lost or stolen guns.

“Every time I think about those kids, it gets me mad”, Obama said, tears rolling down his cheek.

The truth, of course, is that young people in America’s inner cities die every day because of guns purchased illegally.

Like many, I am skeptical that Obama’s actions can prevent the next mass shooting.

Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders said he would continue the executive orders if elected in 2016. “And that was denied Muslims in Chapel Hill, and Sikhs in Oak Creek”.

But having failed in his push for new gun laws three years ago, Obama conceded today that “it won’t happen overnight, it won’t happen during this Congress, it won’t happen during my presidency”.

She called on Congress to act and pointed out she is a co-sponsor of a bipartisan bill to expand the existing background check system to cover all commercial firearm sales, including those at gun shows, over the Internet or in classified ads while providing reasonable exceptions for family and friend transfers. Kelly Ayotte of opposing common-sense steps to keep people safe from gun violence.

“This has been an administration that has targeted law abiding citizens in particular, rather than targeting criminals, rather than targeting terrorists”.

“No matter what President Obama says, his word does not trump the Second Amendment”, Ryan said.

Republican House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte of Virginia said he anxious that the president’s actions could encroach on due process by giving the government the power to deny gun ownership to those it considered mentally incompetent. He stressed the fact that numerous actions he’s calling for can only be imposed through legislative action.

Licensed dealers must run background checks on prospective buyers, but private sellers don’t.

U.S. Rep. Kay Granger, R-Fort Worth, said it’s time the president realize that it is Congress that makes the laws. “This should not be allowed under our constitutional framework”.

Obama repeatedly said that the majority of gun owners agree with these steps and not with the National Rifle Association’s rhetoric opposing reasonable gun controls. However, an NRA spokeswoman quoted in The New York Timesappeared to downplay the significance of the measures. Among the factors that would determine whether someone had to conduct background checks, Freilich said, would be whether they had business cards, advertised online, or sold guns in their original packaging soon after buying them. “If a child can’t open a bottle of aspirin, make sure they can’t pull a trigger on a gun”.

Obama’s move is aimed at ensuring that more people are subject to background checks – but that alone doesn’t promise that background checks will then screen out more people seeking firearms.

But the Federal Bureau of Investigation warns that there is not necessarily a direct correlation between background checks and actual number of gun sales as some background checks are conducted for gun permits, not the sale of a weapon. We are not inherently more prone to violence.