President Obama gave an emotional speech Tuesday at the White House, in which he announced plans for several executive actions to regulate gun sales and gun safety.
“The United States of America is not the only country on Earth with violent or dangerous people, we are not inherently more prone to violence,” he said. “But we are the only advanced country on Earth that sees this kind of mass violence erupt with this kind of frequency. It doesn’t happen in other advanced countries. It’s not even close.”
Obama brought up the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007, the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in 2011, and the Aurora, Colo. movie theater shooting in 2012 as reminders of why the U.S. needs stronger gun control measures. He reminded the audience that he is not running for re-election and isn’t attempting to “score points” by trying to improve gun safety.
He began to cry when speaking about the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012, where 26 people, 20 of them children, were killed in Newtown, Conn.
“Every time I think about those kids, it gets me mad,” he said, wiping away tears. “And by the way, it happens on the streets of Chicago every day.”
The steps the president proposed in his speech included requiring background checks for all gun purchases, even online and at gun shows; increasing the number of agents enforcing existing gun laws; expanding mental health treatment nationwide to reduce gun suicides; and improving gun safety technology. For the last point, Obama invoked Apple technology, such as fingerprint unlocking and the “Find my iPhone” app, saying,“If we can do it for your iPad, there’s no reason we can’t do it with a stolen gun.”
Of course, gun-rights advocates are already denouncing Obama’s plans. NRA spokeswoman Jennifer Baker told the Washington Post that the speech was “political theater to distract from the president’s failed record,” while the New York Times reports that both House Speaker Paul Ryan and presidential candidate Jeb Bush accused Obama of trying to take guns away from law-abiding citizens (although the president said several times in his speech that this is not the case).
College students don’t need to be reminded of the dangers of guns: In 2015, we saw shootings at Umpqua Community College, Northern Arizona University and Tennessee State University, among others. Here’s to hoping that there will be fewer (or ideally, none) of these stories in 2016.