In the immediate aftermath of the school shooting in Oregon. President Obama called for more gun control. [Click here to read the full statement.] “As I said just a few months ago, and I said a few months before that, and I said each time we see one of these mass shootings, our thoughts and prayers are not enough. It’s not enough . . . and it does nothing to prevent this carnage from being inflicted someplace else in America. Next week or a couple of months from now . . . It cannot be this easy for someone who wants to inflict harm on other people to get his or her hands on a gun . . .
“Right now I can imagine the press releases being cranked out. ‘We need more guns,’ they’ll argue. “Fewer gun safety laws.’ Does anyone actually believe that? . . .
“Somebody somewhere will comment and say ‘Obama politicized this issue.’ Well this is something we should politicize. It is relevant to our common life together. To the body politic . . .
“This is a political choice that we make. To allow this to happen every few months join America. We are collectively answerable to those families who lose their loves ones because of our inaction . . .
“The notion that . . . our freedom and our Constitution prohibits any modest regulation of how we use a deadly weapon, when there are law-abiding gun owners all across the country who could hunt and protect their families and do everything they do under such regulations, doesn’t make sense.
“I would particularly ask America’s gun owners who are using those guns properly, safely, to hunt, for sport, for protecting their families, to think about whether your views are being properly represented by the organization that suggests it’s speaking for you.
“And each time this happens I’m going to bring this up. Each time this happens I’m going to say we can actually do something about it but we’re going to have to change our laws.”