President Obama made a forceful case for renewing efforts to move Congress on gun control Friday afternoon while speaking to the U.S. Conference of Mayors in San Francisco.
“I refuse to act as if this is the new normal or to pretend that it is simply sufficient to grieve — and that any mention of us doing something to stop it is somehow politicizing the problem,” Obama said.
Obama acknowledged in his brief Thursday remarks about the historic black church massacre in Charleston that Congress had little appetite for gun control. But he told the mayors Friday that didn’t mean he was giving up: “I want to be clear — I am not resigned.”
Obama continued that he was “simply making the point that we have to move public opinion.” And that “ultimately, Congress will follow the people.”
After the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., in December of 2012, Congress should have acted, Obama said.
“If Congress had passed some common-sense gun-safety reforms after Newtown” there’s no guarantee it would have stopped Dylann Roof from killing nine people but “we might still have some more Americans with us,” Obama said.
Obama also addressed the familiar pattern that public debate sparked by mass shootings follows.
“At the very least, we should be able to talk about this issue as citizens, without demonizing all gun owners who are overwhelmingly law-abiding, but also without suggesting that any debate about this involves a wild-eyed plot to take everybody’s guns away,” Obama said.
Obama noted that mayors in particular have to pick up the community wreckage gun violence causes and offered a harsh statistic: 11,000 people were killed in the U.S. by guns in 2013.
“[I]t tears at the fabric of a community; it costs you money and it costs resources,” he told the assembled mayors. “It costs this country dearly.”
He also said that public pressure can move Congress, even when lawmakers seem to have staked out intractable positions.
“And ultimately, Congress acts when the public insists on action,” Obama said. “And we’ve seen how public opinion can change. We’ve seen it change on gay marriage. We’ve seen it beginning to change on climate change. We’ve got to shift how we think about this issue … we have to feel a sense of urgency.”