Obama Set To Visit Roseburg, Ore.
President Obama will meet with the families of those killed and injured when a man opened fire at a community college in Oregon.
Nine people were killed and nine others were wounded when Chris Harper Mercer, 26, began shooting in a classroom last Thursday.
After the shooting, Obama delivered his most impassioned speech to date regarding the need for stricter gun control laws.
As NPR reported, Obama urged Americans to support “common sense” gun laws and pre-empted critics who might accuse him of politicizing a tragedy by saying that gun safety “should be politicized.”
“When roads are unsafe, we fix them to reduce auto fatalities. We have seat belt laws because we know it saves lives. So the notion that gun violence is somehow different, that our freedom, that 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.”
He also recalled previous mass shootings in the U.S.: “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.”
