In the aftermath of the tragic shooting at Umpqua Community College Thursday, a visibly frustrated, President Obama spoke from the White House Thursday afternoon. The President is clearly sick at heart, and weary of addressing the country after yet another senseless and preventable tragedy. It’s also fair to say, dad’s mad.
In part President Obama said,
“Anybody who does this has a sickness in their minds regardless of what they think their motivations may be. But we are not the only country on Earth that has people with mental illnesses or that want to do harm to other people,” the President said. “We are the only advanced country on Earth that sees these kinds of mass shootings every few months.”
The speech took place before the shooter was identified as troubled 26-yr-old Christopher Harper Mercer. Obama clearly foresaw criticism ahead, accusing him of politicizing the tragedy.
“This is something we should politicize, it is relevant to our common life together, to the body politic.” As if on cue, Mike Huckabee stepped up to accuse President Obama of politicizing the event, and worse.
“We hardly know any of the details about this horrific tragedy – What kind of gun was used? How did the shooter obtain it? What is the motive? Does the shooter have a history of mental illness? Was this an act of terror? With few facts, Obama is quick to admittedly politicize this tragedy to advance his liberal, anti-gun agenda, Huckabee spouted. ” For this President to make a political pronouncement is at best premature and at worst ignorantly inflammatory.”
“Ignorantly inflammatory” Indeed. With his presidential term coming to an end, there is nothing Obama would rather do than ‘advance his liberal anti-gun agenda’ and inflame those involved in our harmonious political process.
President Barack Obama contrasted the federal efforts to combat terrorism with the lack of action on senseless gun violence.
“We spend over 1 trillion dollars and pass countless laws and devote entire agencies to preventing terrorist attacks on our soil, and rightfully so,” Obama said after the deadly attack at Umpqua Community College. “And yet we have a Congress that explicitly blocks us from collecting data on how we could potentially reduce gun deaths. How can that be?”
The President invited people to do the research for themselves, and find how many people are killed as a result of gun violence, compared to the number killed by acts of terrorism.
NBC ran the following numbers.
The Global Terrorism Database estimates: 3,046 people in the U.S. died in terrorist or possible terrorist attacks between 2001 and 2014
.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 153,144 people were killed by homicide in which firearms were used between 2001 and 2013, the last year that data are available (that number excludes deaths by “legal intervention”).
“When Americans are killed in mine disasters, we work to make mines safer,” the president noted. “When Americans are killed in floods and hurricanes, we make communities safer. When roads are unsafe, we fix them, to reduce auto fatalities. We have seat-belt laws because we know it saves lives.