The United States Mass Killings Continue

Teddy Roosevelt in the "Bully Pulpit"
"I have no idea what the American people think. I only know what they should think."

Presidents are human beings. Like the rest of us, they experience pleasure and pain. Sometimes their emotion shows in public. FDR was angry when he spoke to Congress in December, 1941, describing the attack on Pearl Harbour as a day of infamy. George W. Bush showed fury when he referred to ‘the axis of evil’ in his second State of the Union speech. Usually, though, Presidents show their feelings only in private. During the Vietnam War, LBJ reportedly told an aide, “the only fucking power I have is nuclear but I can’t use it.” The Watergate tapes recorded Nixon, a man who in public was always proper, saying of the Italian currency, “I don’t give a shit about the Lira.”

This week, President Obama had his heart on his sleeve when he spoke about the deaths at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon. Here are extracts from his speech:

“There has been another mass shooting, this time in a community college in Oregon. That means there are more American families whose lives have been changed forever. But 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. It does not capture the heartache and grief and anger that we should feel. And it does nothing to prevent this carnage from being inflicted someplace else in America next week, or a couple of months from now.

“We are the only advanced country on Earth that sees these kinds of mass shootings every few months. We talked about this after Columbine and Blacksburg, after Tucson, after Newtown, after Aurora, after Charleston. It cannot be this easy for somebody who wants to inflict harm on other people to get his or her hands on a gun. And what's become routine, of course, is the response of those who oppose any kind of common-sense gun legislation. Right now, I can imagine the press releases being cranked out: We need more guns, they'll argue. Fewer gun safety laws.

“We know that other countries, in response to one mass shooting, have been able to craft laws that almost eliminate mass shootings. Friends of ours, allies of ours, Great Britain, Australia, countries like ours. So we know there are ways to prevent it.

“We spend over a trillion dollars, and pass countless laws, and devote entire agencies to preventing terrorist attacks on our soil, and rightfully so. And yet, we have a Congress that explicitly blocks us from even collecting data on how we could potentially reduce gun deaths. This is a political choice that we make to allow this to happen every few months in America. We collectively are answerable to those families who lose their loved ones because of our inaction. When Americans are killed in mine disasters, we work to make mines safer. 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 seatbelt laws because we know it saves lives.

“So the notion that gun violence is somehow different, 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 properly being 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 am going to say that we can actually do something about it, but we're going to have to change our laws. And this is not something I can do by myself. I've got to have a Congress and I've got to have state legislatures and governors who are willing to work with me on this.”

This week, The Washington Post stated there were more than 30,000 gun killings in the United States in 2013. In most countries, this would be regarded as an epidemic. Were a disease to take so many American lives, the public would demand research, public expenditure and appropriate programs to stem the tide but ask Congress to approve the smallest change to gun laws? Heaven forbid.

The British media has given space to the latest outrage in Oregon because Mercer, the perpetrator, was supposedly born in UK. I don’t care where he was born, I don’t care that he may have had a mental illness and I will offer no remorse because he is dead. The reason the killings happened is simplicity itself. Pretty well anyone in the States can get their hands on a gun and ammunition.

I am weary of writing about this subject. If Americans really believe that the right to bear arms for everyone in any circumstances is a demonstration of freedom, I want no part of it.

As for Mr. Obama, please stop wringing your hands. Your speech said many admirable things but, in the words of Walter Mondale, ‘where’s the beef?’ Where are detailed proposals which can be championed by Congressmen? I am aware that earlier this year, you had Congress look at proposals tightening gun background checks but the effort failed. So try again to get the laws changed.

Mr Obama, you have thirteen months left in The White House before the election. May I recommend you visit every state, every big city and dust off Teddy Roosevelt’s bully pulpit to take your case to the American people? Use social media to support you. If you are really serious about stemming the tide of mass gun killings, persuade voters the length and breadth of America to shame their members of Congress into producing some meaningful gun laws. If you fail, nobody can accuse you of not trying. But if you don’t get out of the Oval Office to take your case to the country, how do you expect to be taken seriously on gun law change?