President Obama: We must seek agreement on gun reforms

It's been more than two months since the tragedy in Tucson stunned the nation. It was a moment when we came together as one people to mourn and to pray for those we lost. And in the attack's turbulent wake, Americans by and large rightly refrained from finger-pointing, assigning blame or playing politics with other people's pain.

But one clear and terrible fact remains. A man our Army rejected as unfit for service; a man one of our colleges deemed too unstable for studies; a man apparently bent on violence, was able to walk into a store and buy a gun.

He used it to murder six people and wound 13 others. And if not for the heroism of bystanders and a brilliant surgical team, it would have been far worse.

But since that day, we have lost perhaps another 2,000 members of our American family to gun violence. Thousands more have been wounded. We lose the same number of young people to guns every day and a half as we did at Columbine, and every four days as we did at Virginia Tech.

Every single day, America is robbed of more futures. It has awful consequences for our society. And as a society, we have a responsibility to do everything we can to put a stop to it.

Now, like the majority of Americans, I believe that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to bear arms. And the courts have settled that as the law of the land. In this country, we have a strong tradition of gun ownership that's handed from generation to generation. Hunting and shooting are part of our national heritage. And, in fact, my administration has not curtailed the rights of gun owners - it has expanded them, including allowing people to carry their guns in national parks and wildlife refuges.

The fact is, almost all gun owners in America are highly responsible. They're our friends and neighbors. They buy their guns legally and use them safely, whether for hunting or target shooting, collection or protection. And that's something that gun-safety advocates need to accept. Likewise, advocates for gun owners should accept the awful reality that gun violence affects Americans everywhere, whether on the streets of Chicago or at a supermarket in Tucson.

I know that every time we try to talk about guns, it can reinforce stark divides. People shout at one another, which makes it impossible to listen. We mire ourselves in stalemate, which makes it impossible to get to where we need to go as a country.

However, I believe that if common sense prevails, we can get beyond wedge issues and stale political debates to find a sensible, intelligent way to make the United States of America a safer, stronger place.

I'm willing to bet that responsible, law-abiding gun owners agree that we should be able to keep an irresponsible, law-breaking few - dangerous criminals and fugitives, for example - from getting their hands on a gun in the first place.

I'm willing to bet they don't think that using a gun and using common sense are incompatible ideas - that we should check someone's criminal record before he can check out at a gun seller; that an unbalanced man shouldn't be able to buy a gun so easily; that there's room for us to have reasonable laws that uphold liberty, ensure citizen safety and are fully compatible with a robust Second Amendment.

That's why our focus right now should be on sound and effective steps that will actually keep those irresponsible, law-breaking few from getting their hands on a gun in the first place.

• First, we should begin by enforcing laws that are already on the books. The National Instant Criminal Background Check System is the filter that's supposed to stop the wrong people from getting their hands on a gun. Bipartisan legislation four years ago was supposed to strengthen this system, but it hasn't been properly implemented. It relies on data supplied by states - but that data is often incomplete and inadequate. We must do better.

• Second, we should in fact reward the states that provide the best data - and therefore do the most to protect our citizens.

• Third, we should make the system faster and nimbler. We should provide an instant, accurate, comprehensive and consistent system for background checks to sellers who want to do the right thing, and make sure that criminals can't escape it.

Porous background checks are bad for police officers, for law-abiding citizens and for the sellers themselves. If we're serious about keeping guns away from someone who's made up his mind to kill, then we can't allow a situation where a responsible seller denies him a weapon at one store, but he effortlessly buys the same gun someplace else.

Clearly, there's more we can do to prevent gun violence. But I want this to at least be the beginning of a new discussion on how we can keep America safe for all our people.

I know some aren't interested in participating. Some will say that anything short of the most sweeping anti-gun legislation is a capitulation to the gun lobby. Others will predictably cast any discussion as the opening salvo in a wild-eyed scheme to take away everybody's guns. And such hyperbole will become the fodder for overheated fundraising letters.

But I have more faith in the American people than that. Most gun-control advocates know that most gun owners are responsible citizens. Most gun owners know that the word "commonsense" isn't a code word for "confiscation." And none of us should be willing to remain passive in the face of violence or resigned to watching helplessly as another rampage unfolds on television.

As long as those whose lives are shattered by gun violence don't get to look away and move on, neither can we.

We owe the victims of the tragedy in Tucson and the countless unheralded tragedies each year nothing less than our best efforts - to seek consensus, to prevent future bloodshed, to forge a nation worthy of our children's futures.

A crazy whacko leftist- occultist Laughner slaughters people, and then Obama wants to remove the 2nd amendment rights of 200 million gun owners?

This is the land of the free Mr. Magic Negro( Spike Lee’s name for Obama.). You will not take that freedom from us in time for your planned Cairo style riots across our nation in the summer of 2012.

Send your SEIU thugs into our neighborhoods to burn people out, and they will be met with a resolve cast in lead.

[Obama Article] The National Instant Criminal Background Check System is the filter that's supposed to stop the wrong people from getting their hands on a gun. Bipartisan legislation four years ago was supposed to strengthen this system, but it hasn't been properly implemented. It relies on data supplied by states - but that data is often incomplete and inadequate. We must do better.

I think he's salami-slicing and trying to get ownership of the issue by "sounding reasonable", of course, but here I think he is concentrating on building a national gun registry sub rosa (in defiance of Congress) and is calling for more data, and integrating States' databases, to help build it and clarify who has guns.

I've no doubt that he fully intends to cut our throats later.

This is the land of the free Mr. Magic Negro( Spike Lee’s name for Obama.).

I don't know who coined it, but that nick got spread around in 3/2007 by a David Ehrenstein profile/opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times.

Ehrenstein's take was that Obama was running a grift, selling indulgences to undeserving whites (Ehrenstein is gay, black, and Jewish) in return for political support. His concern was that Obama's act would eventually "let Whitey off the hook" instead of "doing the right thing". </Spike Lee>

I think Ehrenstein can relax about Magic Negro's intentions when it comes to "doing the right thing" -- he fully intends to burn America to the ground.

I think Ehrenstein can relax about Magic Negro’s intentions when it comes to “doing the right thing” — he fully intends to burn America to the ground. >>>>>>>>>>>>

Agreed.

And the community organizing for “Cairo” style riots is already underway. We will have community organized leftists riots in Watts, New Orleans, NYC, Chicago and Detroit, in order to cow the electoral opposition in the run up to the Nov. 2012 election.We had a little preview in Madison.This is in the Obama thug style, an attempt to bully the nation.

Obama did the same thing with his cousin Odinga in Kenya 2007. That resulted in 7000 deaths by the machete and the torch in Kenya,slaughter in the streets through intertribal warfare.

I have no dount in my mind that Obama will seek to create enough disorder so as to declare martial law , especially in red states.

Obama did the same thing with his cousin Odinga in Kenya 2007. That resulted in 7000 deaths by the machete and the torch in Kenya, slaughter in the streets through intertribal warfare.

If he thinks he can do that here, he has a big, ugly surprise coming. Thanks for reminding to do a couple of things around here.

He can't train up his "Leftist militia" fast enough to put something together that will get over the People. All he will do is bring matters to a head as between the People and his factionalists. The glare will be visible from Mars.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.