Tell me that this isn’t depressing despite its eloquence…
STATEMENT BY THE PRESIDENT
ON THE SHOOTINGS AT UMPQUA COMMUNITY COLLEGE
IN ROSEBURG, OREGONJames S. Brady Press Briefing Room
6:22 P.M. EDT
THE PRESIDENT: There’s been another mass shooting in America — this time, in a community college in Oregon.
That means there are more American families — moms, dads, children — whose lives have been changed forever. That means there’s another community stunned with grief, and communities across the country forced to relieve their own anguish, and parents across the country who are scared because they know it might have been their families or their children.
I’ve been to Roseburg, Oregon. There are really good people there. I want to thank all the first responders whose bravery likely saved some lives today. Federal law enforcement has been on the scene in a supporting role, and we’ve offered to stay and help as much as Roseburg needs, for as long as they need.
In the coming days, we’ll learn about the victims — young men and women who were studying and learning and working hard, their eyes set on the future, their dreams on what they could make of their lives. And America will wrap everyone who’s grieving with our prayers and our love.
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 don’t yet know why this individual did what he did. And it’s fair to say that anybody who does this has a sickness in their minds, regardless of what they think their motivations may be. But we are not the only country on Earth that has people with mental illnesses or want to do harm to other people. We are the only advanced country on Earth that sees these kinds of mass shootings every few months.
Earlier this year, I answered a question in an interview by saying, “The United States of America is the one advanced nation on Earth in which we do not have sufficient common-sense gun-safety laws — even in the face of repeated mass killings.” And later that day, there was a mass shooting at a movie theater in Lafayette, Louisiana. That day! Somehow this has become routine. The reporting is routine. My response here at this podium ends up being routine. The conversation in the aftermath of it. We’ve become numb to this.
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.
Does anybody really believe that? There are scores of responsible gun owners in this country –they know that’s not true. We know because of the polling that says the majority of Americans understand we should be changing these laws — including the majority of responsible, law-abiding gun owners.
There is a gun for roughly every man, woman, and child in America. So how can you, with a straight face, make the argument that more guns will make us safer? We know that states with the most gun laws tend to have the fewest gun deaths. So the notion that gun laws don’t work, or just will make it harder for law-abiding citizens and criminals will still get their guns is not borne out by the evidence.
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.
And, of course, what’s also routine is 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. I would ask news organizations — because I won’t put these facts forward — have news organizations tally up the number of Americans who’ve been killed through terrorist attacks over the last decade and the number of Americans who’ve been killed by gun violence, and post those side-by-side on your news reports. This won’t be information coming from me; it will be coming from you. 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. How can that be?
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.
So, tonight, as those of us who are lucky enough to hug our kids a little closer are thinking about the families who aren’t so fortunate, I’d ask the American people to think about how they can get our government to change these laws, and to save lives, and to let young people grow up. And that will require a change of politics on this issue. And it will require that the American people, individually, whether you are a Democrat or a Republican or an independent, when you decide to vote for somebody, are making a determination as to whether this cause of continuing death for innocent people should be a relevant factor in your decision. If you think this is a problem, then you should expect your elected officials to reflect your views.
And 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.
I hope and pray that I don’t have to come out again during my tenure as President to offer my condolences to families in these circumstances. But based on my experience as President, I can’t guarantee that. And that’s terrible to say. And it can change.
May God bless the memories of those who were killed today. May He bring comfort to their families, and courage to the injured as they fight their way back. And may He give us the strength to come together and find the courage to change.
Thank you.
END 6:35 P.M. EDT
I’m glad my boy is still young enough that I don’t have to try to explain this to him.
I…damn…
I went to school in Eugene. I spent a lot of time in Roseburg, including helping my best friend at the time get a job at a radio station there. I know the town pretty well. I know the college campus. And the hospital where most of the victims were taken. And the fairgrounds where they took the survivors. And so on. This should strike unusually close to home for me.
But it doesn’t, of course, any more than the federal destruction, twice over, of New Orleans (another place I knew well) did. It’s not just gun laws. It’s not just the grossly inadequate mental health treatment programs. It’s not just religious fanaticism or testosterone poisoning.
I accepted a long time ago that this country places a very low value on human life, even less on some lives than on others, and that when particularly acute displays of this erupt, about all you can do is try not to puke. The weeping is repetitive and ultimately futile. If there was any chance at all a significant portion of American policymakers cared about the many, many pointless deaths our country incurs each year, abroad or at home, there would have been some evidence of it in my lifetime.
There hasn’t been, because ours is a country whose prosperity is built on random and not-so-random violence. We – or at least, the “we” that matters – are addicted to it. And, so, a pretty little logging community in Oregon becomes yet another push pin on the map of modern American barbarity. The Internet is already awash with people making excuses. Bleah.
Those of us of a certain age were privileged to grow up in a time when school shootings were so rare and the injury and deaths of students were even rare that we were protected from knowing that such a thing ever happened. No guards and no metal detectors to walk through on entering the school. No anxiety or worry that on any day in any school that we weren’t perfectly safe.
Until I was fifteen, the only guns I’d ever seen were cap and bb guns. The latter scared me. I still recall shuddering when I saw a display of rifles in a cabinet at the home of a woman that was in our church choir with my mother and me. As violent TV shows — cops and westerns — were banned in my home when I was growing up, I’ve avoided being around guns.
Nice perspective … brings me down memory lane when our family arrived as immigrants after passing through Ellis Island in Hoboken, New York. We had a temporary stay of a few weeks in downtown St. Louis in an antiquated hotel. As a 11 year-old I had the time of my life, every day was a big adventure. We visited the shopping area, nearby Fire Dep’t and were welcomed to take a seat on the ladder wagon, etc. In the old country at my age, America was the land of cowboys and Indians, adventure books in an extended series were written about a white cowboy and his Indian partner in historic Arizona.
So we bought toy outfits to dress-up as an Indian and a cowboy with a cap pistol. We roamed the streets near Union Station, our territory, when we met a middle-aged and experienced St. Louis City cop walking his beat. We didn’t speak a word English, so he resorted to gestures for communication. He tried to tell is of the dangers on the streets of downtown St. Louis. We didn’t understand, so in the end he took out his knife [that’s my reconstruction after >50 years] and made the gesture of slashing his throat. That certainly brought home his message and the rest of the days we always looked over our shoulders to watch out for any bad guys.
As anecdote, my mother got fed up worrying about her 4 kids on the loose in the city, so she went to the local parish school and hoped to enroll us kids for a few weeks. We were refused because of the color of our skin .. the grammar school was all black and the priest saw no possibility to introduce a few immigrant kids. Reverse discrimination? As kids we thought that argument was just fine with us and continued our adventures, trying to avoid that cop walking his beat.
As an aside, the housing of Mill Creek Valley near Union Station was still intact and later razed to the ground in the segregated city plans for “renewal” that was never developed. See my recent post here.
The Mill Creek Valley, running from 20th Street to Grand, and from Olive to the railroad tracks on the south, was home to a large African American population. Along with cheap tenements that housed black laborers and more substantial housing, the area was home to a thriving entertainment area in the Chestnut Valley, the district along Chestnut and Market streets near 20th. Scott Joplin and other musicians played ragtime and jazz music here at Tom Turpin’s Rosebud Cafe and other nightspots. The Mill Creek and nearby areas were home to such institutions as the Pine Street YMCA, the Wheatley YWCA, Vashon High School, St. Paul AME Church, St. Elizabeth’s Catholic Church and School, and Union Memorial United Methodist Church. After World War II, thousands of rural blacks from the South moved into the area. When a massive civic improvement bond issue, which included plans to redevelop the Mill Creek area, passed in 1954, the area’s estimated population was nearly 20,000 persons, or roughly 5,600 families, nearly 95 percent black. Demolition of housing and other structures in the valley began in 1959.
Sind Sie Deutsch? Sie haben wie “Old Shatterhand” gesprechen.
No, not the from Saxony Karl May books, but a Dutch version written for children and teens by a grammar school teacher Nowee living in The Hague. See my previous link.
And in the James Brady briefing room, no less.
Obama’s comments that is, not the shooting itself. Of course, I suppose that was lost on the press and not mentioned. We have a poor sense of history in this country.
Terrible topic/ good speech. I guess practice makes it easier to come up with a good one. Old folks like me tend to get more negative as they age I’m told. That may be true, but I really wish there were not so many reasons for my cynicism and shame.
If only your comment about your son being too young to understand would hold up over time. Even our President, in his eloquent plea for sanity, knows that this is a speech he will give again even before the end of his term. And the likelihood that the next administration champions this cause is very small.
Twenty small bodies lying in an elementary school couldn’t change our gun culture. Church members in a small community slaughtered in a prayer session didn’t change it, either. Two newscasters shot WHILE FILMED WITH A LIVE FUCKING CAMERA didn’t even get us going.
You might as well figure out a way to explain to your son how these things happen, because they aren’t going to stop.
Josh Marshall put into words exactly how I feel.
Pretty much what I told my wife after the Charleston shooting. It is an acceptable point of view in our country that we have to regularly water the tree of liberty with the blood of innocents. It is accepted as the price for our “freedoms”. It’s just baked into the cake of the American culture at this point. We are a violent culture and that seems to be just fine and dandy with us.
I’m not quite as pessimistic as others. We’re dealing with decades of Democrats running and hiding on this issue, ceding the ground to NRA paranoia. I think change is possible but it will require organization and time. People need to get together on what exactly is the goal. Universal background checks? Mandatory licensing tests? Obama is trying to turn this issue but he knows that it’s unlikely he can do much in his remaining time.
I agree to an extent that Americans have made their choice about the availability of guns in general but that doesn’t mean changes can’t be made. It seems like only about a third of Americans own guns.
It’s very important to recognize that the NRA is not some irresistible force in politics. They have backed plenty of candidates who have lost. In fact, their endorsed and supported candidates lose far more often than they win.
They’re very good at getting people to print the legend, however.
Gun violence is our Syria — an intractable problem, no end in sight.
The comparison to Australia is germane here. They had a bad mass killing with an assault weapon/large capacity magazine some years ago. These weapons were legal but I think there were not a huge number in private hands; there was no widespread political movement worrying about a tyrannical government taking there Freedoms!. Also, from the perspective of the political right, the Black People were docile and non-threatening.
Here, on the other hand, even at the time of Columbine, we have a political right fetishizing military-style and personal weapons as symbols or tools of Freedom! and a neo-confederate view of how to control (criminal) black people that has the gun and defense of property/women and self at its core. And now we are more awash in these weapons and this culture than ever before.
Speaking of Columbine, I really do think that Moore’s Bowling For Columbine is the touchstone for this still.
And I hate to say it, but the core problem is culture, not law. We can and should, if we ever can, make laws that mitigate this problem of mass killings. Maybe over the long haul, if there are laws that stigmatize and undercut the fetishization of the Gun for non-sporting use, it can make a difference to the culture, but its going to be generations to see a change.
Could sane handgun laws make a significant dent in the suicide, accidental shootings, and spousal killings that far far outstrip mass killings but never get the press? Thats more probable I think, but it circles back the same culture problem and obstinate resistance of the right.
9/12/15 MN – People: Horrific Details Emerge On Minnesota Dad Who Killed Wife, Three Kids and Then Turned Gun On Self: Report
SD 9/22/15 – USNews: South Dakota man fatally shot his wife and 4 kids, set their home ablaze then killed himself
Other family members and friends shocked and in disbelief that such loving husbands and fathers could do such a thing. So yes, it’s not just guns, not just mental illness, but something more pervasive.
Does Australia have a 2nd Amendment? Because that does seem to be the root of the cultural problem.
No, only four countries have a “right to bear arms”. US, Mexico, Guatemala, and Haiti. Lovely company, isn’t it?
Seems the folders wrote that one rather badly.
It’s impossible for me not to get depressed when thinking about this issue. The specifics will involve not just background checks but serious licensing tests, mandatory liability insurance, and then confiscation of all the unregistered and unlicensed firearms. That will go over like a lead dirigible. So, yeah – we’re stuck with these spree killings being part of everyday life for the indefinite future.
I’m not a huge Obama fan, but I do commend him on his speech last evening.
Speaking only for myself, I expect nothing to change. This site is about building/supporting the Democratic party, but color me utterly cynical. I would love to be utterly wrong, but please awaken me if the Ds actually, you know, DO something re lax gun laws and the attendant culture of pervasive unceasing murderous violence in this nation of ours.
Nothing will be done. STFU and carry on.
The PTB don’t give a crap, including our “elected representatives” (of whatever party affiliation). Why should they? They’re highly compensated to ignore gun violence bc it doesn’t touch them or their families (if they even care about anyone other than themselves and their power).
Another mass killing? Yay, more useless eaters bumped off. Yes, I’m cynical, but if the 1% even notices such things, why shouldn’t they celebrate? There’s few jobs out there for the youth of America. If they’re bumped off? Well, don’t have to worry about those kids, anyway.
That’s my take. Good luck to us all.
Jim Wright sums it up, in yet another bitter updating of his Aurora massacre essay:
http://www.stonekettle.com/2012/07/the-seven-stages-of-gun-violence.html
I’d go on to his “Bang Bang Crazy” series, linked at the bottom of the essay, but it’s up to ten parts by now and I’m too damn angry, depressed, and, yes, numbed right now.
Bless our President. Bless his fury, and his dignity within it. Would that his words would matter in this sick, sick country.
Jim just keeps adding to his 7 Stages post every time there is a new incident. The fact that he has to keep recycling that post is just so depressing. I debated whether to share his essay on Facebook, but the gun-loving friends that I do have on Facebook are largely impervious to discussion. And they certainly wouldn’t make it through the first 10 sentences in Jim’s long commentary.
The paragraph that lists all the recent major mass shootings is what should be read at every public gathering for the latest mass shooting. Maybe not helpful or useful, but no less so than all those candles that get lit and prayers that get said.
I liked this summary preface:
We never know when, where, or by whom the next mass shooting will occur. However, the response will be exactly the same every time. Collectively we’re predictable, individually, not so much.
I got halfway through that paragraph and started to feel physically sick. It’s beyond insanity.
Compared to the frequency and injury/death toll of bombings in Iraq, US mass shootings should fall down a bit on the list of what should sicken us. (As a proportion of population, the US numbers compared to those in Iraq very small.) Both are the price of “freedom.” “Freedom” for that third of the US population to tote guns. US imposed “freedom” for the people of Iraq. So much new found “freedom” in Iraq that we and our buddies have been exporting it to Syria.
Obama was pretty visibly pissed off about the futility of acting. Aside from the obvious anger at what happened I definitely get the sense that people not giving a shot about dealing with a problem offends him on a personal level.
BTW is it true the gunman specially targeted Christisns?
Allegedly, yes. However, the same happened with Columbine, but that turned out to be untrue.
I’m skeptical of it all from the Xian claim to the 4chan link. We probably won’t know anything for a week.
There are some witness statements that he specifically targeted Christians, and we are going to have to work hard to make sure the nut jobs don’t turn that into a distraction.
Even if he targeted Christians, so what? It has nothing to do with gun control.
Here’s what I’d like to confirm: it sounds like a few people in the school were actually armed (legally) but didn’t do anything because the situation was either too chaotic or they didn’t want to be shot by the police. Can anyone confirm that?
Heh. Don’t expect our crapulous mass media to report on armed people who were there and didn’t shoot the bad guy. Nothing to see here, move along, focus on the unarmed hero who tried to hold the door, hammer on the Christians targeted angle, show more pictures of the candlelight vigils, that’s always a good tearjerker eyeball-grabber, dig into the bad guy’s background — but only enough to portray him as just another deranged loner.
They’ve got their script, it’s all prepackaged and long-practiced, and it’s not in their self-interest to deviate from the usual.
Think Progress has this story,
My children are old enough that I would have to explain, if they asked. But this has become so commonplace that they don’t think anything of it. You go to school, you might die. But that’s not a big deal, because you might die in the movie theater, or walking down the street, or anywhere there’s a cop. That’s their reality.
Well the sheriff in charge is a Sandy Hook Truther
Aught to be a great investigation
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/john-hanlin-sandy-hook-truther
Great. Just great. Let him now explain to his like minded, idiot friends exactly how the hoax, false flag was perpetrated in his community. He can expose all the tricks so none of us “non-truthers” will ever be duped again.
Or he could be given a leave of absence to spend time at the looney-bin to recover his marbles, assuming he ever had any to lose.
TPM twitter:
Listen up Americans:
GWB on 9/11: “Stuff happens. Now go shopping.”
GWB on Katrina: “Stuff happens”
Barbara Bush on Katrina: “This is working out well for the underprivileged.”
You don’t really want this family back in the WH.
The Guardian Three Médecins Sans Frontières staff killed in suspected US airstrike on Afghan hospital