WASHINGTON — President Obama’s
rage about gun massacres, building for years, spilled out Thursday
night as he acknowledged his own powerlessness to prevent another
tragedy and pleaded with voters to force change themselves.
“So
tonight, as those of us who are lucky enough to hug our kids a little
closer are thinking about the families who aren’t so fortunate,” the
president said in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room, named for a
man severely wounded by a would-be assassin’s bullet, “I’d ask the
American people to think about how they can get our government to change
these laws, and to save these lives and let these people grow up.”
Mr.
Obama admitted that he was unable to do anything to prevent such
tragedies by himself. And he did little to try to hide the anger and
frustration that have deepened as he returns again and again to the
White House lectern in the wake of a deadly mass shooting.
Mr. Obama took a veiled swipe at the National Rifle Association, which has successfully fought most limits on gun use and manufacture and has pushed through legislation in many states making gun ownership far easier. “And I would particularly ask America’s gun owners who are using those guns properly, safely, to hunt for sport, for protecting their families, to think about whether your views are being properly represented by the organization that suggests it is speaking for you,” he said.
Andrew Arulanandam, a spokesman for the N.R.A., declined to respond to Mr. Obama, saying that it was the organization’s policy “not to comment until all the facts are known.” Wayne LaPierre, the organization’s executive vice president, declared after the school shootings in Newtown, Conn., “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”
On Thursday night, Mr. Obama said that given the frequency of mass shootings, people had “become numb to this.”
“And
what’s become routine, of course, is the response of those who oppose
any kind of common-sense gun legislation,” Mr. Obama said. “Right now, I
can imagine the press releases being cranked out. ‘We need more guns,’
they’ll argue. ‘Fewer gun-safety laws.’ ”
“Does anybody really believe that?” he asked, his voice rising.
Mr.
Obama sought to answer that question years ago. After the massacre in
2012 of 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in
Newtown, he promised to use all the powers of his office to push for
legislative changes that polls suggest were widely supported.
“Are we really prepared to say that we’re powerless in the face of such carnage, that the politics are too hard?” Mr. Obama asked then.
Less
than a month later, Mr. Obama unveiled a proposal to overhaul the
nation’s gun laws that would have included universal background checks
and a spate of other measures he deemed “concrete steps” aimed at
preventing more mass shootings.
“This is how we will be judged,” he said in January 2013.
The
judgment came just a few months later, as lawmakers from both parties
forcefully rejected the centerpiece of the president’s gun control
agenda. At the time, and also visibly upset, Mr. Obama stood in the Rose
Garden to denounce the opponents of new gun measures even as he
acknowledged the futility of his efforts.
He called it a “shameful day”
in Washington and promised that eventually, “I believe we’re going to
be able to get this done.” In a Twitter message on Thursday, Dan
Pfeiffer, who was a senior adviser to Mr. Obama until this year,
remembered that afternoon as “the most frustrated I ever saw President
Obama in 8 years.”
With
each massacre since, Mr. Obama has been forced to help the country
grieve, as presidents are called upon to do in national tragedies.
Thirteen dead at the Washington Navy Yard; three dead at Fort Hood in Killeen, Tex.; nine dead in a church in Charleston, S.C.
And with each massacre, his sense of powerless anger and frustration has built.
But
what was different this time was that the president did not announce
any new initiative or effort to fix the problem. Instead, he pointed out
that there is “a gun for roughly every man, woman and child in America.
So how can you with a straight face make the argument that more guns
will make us safer?”
States
and countries that have gun limits have far fewer gun deaths than those
that do not, he said. “So we know there are ways to prevent it,” he
said.
He
pointed out that the government responds to mine disasters by insisting
on safer mines, to weather disasters by improving community safety, and
to highway deaths by fixing roads and insisting that drivers wear
seatbelts.
But
guns are seen as so different that Congress has forbidden the federal
government even to collect certain statistics, he said. He rejected the
notion that the Constitution forbids even modest regulation of deadly
weapons.
He
also asked news organizations to tally the number of Americans killed
by terrorist attacks over the last 10 years and compare that with the
number killed by domestic gun violence. And he implicitly compared the
trillions of dollars spent and multiple agencies devoted to preventing
the relatively few terrorism deaths with the minimal effort and money
spent to prevent the far greater number of gun deaths.
And then he challenged voters to make gun safety a priority.
“If you think this is a problem, then you should expect your elected officials to reflect your views,” he said.
Mr.
Obama has long been seen as fairly unemotional, even distant. His
speeches since being elected in 2008 have sometimes seemed like lectures
from the constitutional law professor he once was. But he is also a
father, one who insists on eating dinner with his daughters.
Shootings,
particularly at schools, have seemingly brought together his roles as
president and father in ways nothing else has. And that combination
brings forth the kind of raw emotion he almost never betrays.
His eulogy
in June for the victims of the massacre in Charleston, for instance,
was widely considered one of his most impassioned, and included singing
the opening refrain of “Amazing Grace.”
Thursday
night, he had little of the soaring language and certainly none of the
hope he expressed in Charleston. But he promised to continue hammering
away at this issue for the rest of his presidency.
“Each
time this happens, I’m going to bring this up,” he said. “Each time
this happens, I’m going to say that we can actually do something about
it.”
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