June 16, 2016

After his visit to the Orlando massacre victims' families, President Obama made a statement to the press. As he usually does after these horrible events, the President seemed angry, but also somewhat resigned to the insane politics around guns.

Making it clear that his focus was on the weapons of mass death used by these deranged killers, Obama said, "We can't anticipate or catch every single deranged person that may wish to do harm to his neighbors, or his friends, or his coworkers, or strangers. But we can do something about the amount of damage that they do. Unfortunately, our politics have conspired to make it as easy as possible for a terrorist or just a disturbed individual like those in Aurora and Newtown to buy extraordinarily powerful weapons -- and they can do so legally."

"Today, once again, as has been true too many times before, I held and hugged grieving family members and parents, and they asked, why does this keep happening? And they pleaded that we do more to stop the carnage," he continued.

"They don’t care about the politics. Neither do I. Neither does Joe. And neither should any parent out there who’s thinking about their kids being not in the wrong place, but in places where kids are supposed to be."

The President then went on to push on the political side of things; specifically, the NRA's perversion of the word "liberty."

"This debate needs to change. It’s outgrown the old political stalemates," he insisted. "The notion that the answer to this tragedy would be to make sure that more people in a nightclub are similarly armed to the killer defies common sense. Those who defend the easy accessibility of assault weapons should meet these families and explain why that makes sense. They should meet with the Newtown families -- some of whom Joe saw yesterday -- whose children would now be finishing fifth grade -- on why it is that we think our liberty requires these repeated tragedies. That's not the meaning of liberty."

Amen.

The full transcript can be read here (PDF).

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