OBAMA CALLS FOR RENEWED GUN CONTROL FIGHT

Addressing the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s annual awards dinner in the wake of the mass shootings at the Washington Nay Yard and in a Chicago park, President Obama urged his audience Saturday to go back and get Congress to pass gun control laws so “dangerous people won’t get their hands on guns.”

“Tomorrow night I'll be meeting in mourning with families in this city [Washington] who now know the same unspeakable grief of families in Newtown and Aurora and Tucson and Chicago and New Orleans and all across the country, people whose loved ones were torn from them without headlines sometimes or public outcry. But it's happening every single day. We fought a good fight earlier this year, but we came up short and that means we've got to get back up and go back at it because as long as there are those who fight to make it as easy as possible for dangerous people to get their hands on a gun, then we've got to work as hard as possible for the sake of our children. We've got to be ones who are willing to do more work to make it harder."

You knew this was coming from the most anti-gun president in America’s history. Of course, he was preaching to the choir. Instead, let me suggest that Obama attend a National Rifle Association meeting to give a speech, with the above remarks, to the assembled NRA members.

UPDATE: At Sunday’s Washington Navy Yard memorial service, Obama made a strident pitch for stronger gun control laws. In part, he said:

“It [gun restrictions] ought to obsess us. ..... No other advanced nation endures this kind of violence. None. Here in America, the murder rate is three times what it is in other developed nations. The murder rate with guns is 10 times what it is with other developed nations. ..... But we Americans are not inherently a more violent people than folks are in other countries. We're not inherently prone to mental health problems. The main difference that sets our nation apart, what makes us so susceptible to so many mass shootings is that we don't do enough, we don't take the basic common sense actions to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and dangerous people. What's different in America is it's easy to get your hands on a gun.”