Time to act. |
President Barack Obama just finished up his presser for his immediate executive actions on gun control. He stressed that Congress is too inept in handling this crisis despite having numerous mass shootings in 2015.
He cited Aurora, Oak Leaf, Wisconsin, Umpqua Community College, Newtown, Tucson, Charleston, San Bernardino, Fort Hood, the Navy Yard in Washington, DC, the Ronoake shooting, and violence in Chicago.
He said that enough is enough.
"Every time I think about those [Sandy Hook victims], it gets me mad," Obama said in the East Room of the White House.
At times, the President has questioned the nation he leads, asking why no other advanced country seems so blighted with regular killing sprees and wondering aloud why Americans will not choose to stop the bloodshed.
Evolving through a cycle of sadness, poleaxing grief, frustration and outright fury, Obama has even offered hints of self-recrimination at his own earlier failure to touch the perfidious politics of gun control himself.
Expect this outrage to carry all the way to the elections. |
"We are not inherently more prone to violence. 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 said. "Somehow we become numb to it and we start to feel that this is normal. And instead of thinking about how to solve the problem, this has become one of our most polarized, partisan debates, despite the fact that there's a general consensus in America about what needs to be done."
He added, "We do have to feel a sense of urgency about it. In Dr. King's words, we need to feel the fierce urgency of now -- because people are dying."
Of course, conservatives are outrage. The presidential candidates for the Republican nomination are upset and the NRA is using this as a rally call.
The same shit that fuels more extremism.
While I am certainly glad the president went all out on these proposals, the damage is done. This country is too polarized to get things done.
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