IN a rare display of emotion, President Barack Obama shed tears as he passionately spoke to the nation about the urgent need to cure the gun violence epidemic in America and save lives. He recalled the innocent first-grade kids massacred in Sandy Hook, among other victims whose lives were cut short because of these senseless killings.
Obama reportedly considers the failure to sign into law the much needed sensible gun control legislation to be the biggest frustration of his presidency, and he felt that time is running out. He blamed Congress, which blocked a tougher gun bill in 2013, and noted that it still needs to impose new gun control measures. He stressed the fact that many of the actions he’s calling for can only be imposed through legislative action.
“The gun lobby may be holding Congress hostage right now. But they cannot hold America hostage. We do not have to accept this carnage as the price of freedom,” Pres. Obama empathically declared.
Thus, the president put matters in his own hands. Using his executive power, he announced measures to expand and bolster the background check system to cover sales that take place online and at gun shows, and provide more funding for mental health treatment, FBI staff and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco Firearms and Explosives agents. He also announced that his administration is going to advance research to update firearms technology to make gun use safer.
“I taught constitutional law. I know a little about this,” Obama said, insisting that he believes in protecting the Second Amendment right of responsible gun owners. And then he made his case that this right to bear arms is not all that America should consider:
“All of us should be able to work together to find a balance that declares the rest of our rights are also important—Second Amendment rights are important, but there are other rights that we care about as well. And we have to be able to balance them.
Because our right to worship freely and safely—that right was denied to Christians in Charleston, South Carolina. And that was denied Jews in Kansas City. And that was denied Muslims in Chapel Hill, and Sikhs in Oak Creek. They had rights, too.
Our right to peaceful assembly—that right was robbed from moviegoers in Aurora and Lafayette.
Our unalienable right to life, and liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—those rights were stripped from college students in Blacksburg and Santa Barbara, and from high schoolers at Columbine, and from first-graders in Newtown. First-graders. And from every family who never imagined that their loved one would be taken from our lives by a bullet from a gun.
Every time I think about those kids it gets me mad. And by the way, it happens on the streets of Chicago every day.
So all of us need to demand a Congress brave enough to stand up to the gun lobby’s lies. All of us need to stand up and protect its citizens. All of us need to demand governors and legislatures and businesses do their part to make our communities safer.
We need the wide majority of responsible gun owners who grieve with us every time this happens and feel like your views are not being properly represented to join with us to demand something better.
And we need voters who want safer gun laws, and who are disappointed in leaders who stand in their way, to remember come election time.”
What do you think about this latest move towards gun control?
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Gel Santos Relos is the anchor of TFC’s “Balitang America.” Views and opinions expressed by the author in this column are are solely those of the author and not of Asian Journal and ABS-CBN-TFC. For comments, go to www.TheFil-AmPerspective.com, https://www.facebook.com/Gel.Santos.Relos
