WASHINGTON
A visibly angry and emotional President Barack Obama challenged lawmakers to reform the country’s gun laws during a poignant speech Thursday following another mass shooting.
“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,” he said visibly frustrated during a nationally televised White House address. “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 some place else in America.”
The American president has said his “biggest frustration” during his time in office is the lack of progress on improving the country’s gun laws, and that frustration mounted Thursday following a mass shooting at a rural Oregon community college.
At least 10 people were killed during a lone gunman’s rampage, and at least 20 others wounded at Umpqua Community College.
The suspect, killed in an exchange of gunfire with law enforcement, is a 20 year-old male, authorities said.
Obama’s speech Thursday night marks at least the ninth time during his presidency that he had to deliver an address to the nation following a mass shooting.
“We are the only advanced country on earth that sees these mass shootings every few months,” Obama said. “Somehow this has become routine.
“We’ve become numb to this,” he added.
Decrying critics of tougher gun laws, Obama said there is a gun for every man, woman and child in the U.S., adding, “How can you, with a straight face, make the argument that more guns will make us safer?
"When Americans are killed in mine disasters, we work to make mines safer," he said. "When Americans are killed in hurricanes and floods, we make communities safer. When roads are unsafe, we fix them to reduce auto fatalities. We have seat-belt laws because we know it saves lives.
"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," he said.
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