President Barack Obama on Saturday renewed his call for gun control and condemned a gunman “for terrorizing an entire community” in the wake of a shooting at a Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado Springs on Friday that left three dead and nine injured.
“If we truly care about this – if we’re going to offer up our thoughts and prayers again, for God knows how many times, with a truly clean conscience – then we have to do something about the easy accessibility of weapons of war on our streets to people who have no business wielding them,” the president said in a written statement.
“This is not normal. We can’t let it become normal. Period. Enough is enough,” he added.
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The statement is another in a growing list of comments the president has made in the wake of deadly gun violence. Last month, Obama was visibly frustrated and angry as he addressed the nation after the deadly shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, where 10 people were killed and nine others were wounded.
On Friday, a gunman armed with an AK-47-style weapon opened fire at a Planned Parenthood clinic. Three people, including a police officer, were killed during a five-hour standoff. Authorities from the Colorado Springs Police Department said nine others, including five officers, were wounded. All nine were in good condition at area hospitals.
The gunman, who has been identified as 57-year-old Robert Dear of North Carolina, walked out of the facility just before 5 p.m. local time and surrendered. His motive has not been determined.
“The last thing Americans should have to do, over the holidays or any day, is comfort the families of people killed by gun violence — people who woke up in the morning and bid their loved ones goodbye with no idea it would be for the last time,” the president said in the statement.
Obama has repeatedly called on Congress to pass comprehensive gun control measures after mass shootings during his tenure.
“This is something we should politicize. It is relevant to our common life together,” Obama said at a press conference after the community college shooting in Oregon. “This is a political choice we make to allow this to happen every few months in America.”
The president praised the officer slain in Friday’s violence.
“May God bless Officer Garrett Swasey and the Americans he tried to save — and may He grant the rest of us the courage to do the same thing,” he said.
Khorri Atkinson