“We all have a responsibility.” That’s the powerful message behind President Obama's new op-ed in The New York Times, which is calling on Americans to stand together on the issue of gun violence.
In the op-ed published Thursday, the president asked the public to stand behind his new gun control measures, reminding us of the real costs of gun violence. “Every year, more than 30,000 Americans have their lives cut short by guns… Hundreds of thousands of Americans have lost brothers and sisters, or buried their own children,” he wrote.
The piece echoes the emotional depth of the president's press conference on Tuesday, in which he announced new executive actions on gun control. He punctuated the details of the actions themselves with recollections of the many mass shootings that have marked his administration.
Obama openly wept as he talked about the Sandy Hook shooting, in which 26 people, 20 of them young children, were killed at an elementary school in Connecticut.
Since Tuesday’s announcement, the administration has been actively trying to soothe fears of disappearing Second Amendment rights and urging Americans to support the measures. The vast majority of Americans support gun regulations, but Congress has repeatedly blocked the legislation.
“Ultimately, this is about all of us,” Obama wrote, saying the public should persevere on the issue with quiet heroism. He cited the tragic story of Zaevion Dobson, a Tennessee teenager who was killed by gunfire a few weeks before Christmas. Dobson, a bystander, threw his own body over three friends to protect them, and was fatally shot. Obama praised this as an act of “heroism.”
“We are not asked to display the grace of the countless victims’ families who have dedicated themselves to ending this senseless violence. But we must find the courage and the will to mobilize, organize, and do what a strong, sensible country does in response to a crisis like this one," he wrote.
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