President Obama on Thursday made an impassioned plea for new gun control measures after a shooting in Oregon killed 10 and wounded seven others, and dared opponents of gun control to charge him with “politicizing” the tragedy — the 15th mass shoooting he’s had to address as president.
“Someone will say ‘Obama politicized this,” a visibly frustrated Obama said Thursday evening after the shooting at a community college campus in Roseburg, Ore. “But this is something we should politicize because” Americans need to discuss it and it belongs “in the body politic,” he said.
Obama has been unable to work with Congress on any gun control reform measure, and he lashed out with his frustration by indicating that voters can fix that problem by pressuring them to support reform.
“If you think this is a problem, then you should expect your elected officials to reflect your views,” Obama said after referring to polls that show a majority of Americans, even a majority of “responsible gun owners” support tighter gun-control laws.
“And each time this happens, I’m going to bring this up,” he said. He called on Congress, governors and state lawmakers to “work with him” because “this is not something that I can do by myself” to make America safer.
“I hope and pray that I don’t have to come out again during my tenure as president” to make such remarks, but he said “based on my experience as president, I can’t guarantee that.”
He began his brief remarks by saying: “There’s been another mass shooting in America. That means more American families, more moms, dads, children, whose lives have been changed forever. That means there’s another community stunned with grief.”
“But as I said just a few months ago and just a few months before that, our thoughts and prayers are not enough,” he said.
“Somehow this has become routine,” he said. “We’ve become numb to this.”
He also said opponents of gun control legislation were likely getting ready to argue that the answer to these tragedies is to get guns in the hands of more people.
“Does anybody really believe that?” he asked.
Officials in Oregon said 10 people were killed and seven were wounded in the attack. Late Thursday, authorities were identifying Chris Harper Mercer as the shooter. Mercer was not a student at the school, and was shot and killed by police.
“While it is still too early to know all of the facts … we have confirmation that the shooter is deceased,” Gov. Kate Brown, D-Ore., said at her brief press conference Thursday afternoon.
This story was updated to reflect changing numbers from authorities on the number of killed and wounded in the attack.
