President Obama has laid out his plans to take executive action in an attempt to cut gun violence. Part of his plan will result in mandatory background checks for individuals purchasing firearms online or at gun shows. The administration is also calling for the hiring of 200 new federal agents to enforce the nation’s gun laws and $500 million to increase access to mental healthcare. On Tuesday, Obama spoke at the White House surrounded by family members of people killed in shootings. It was one of the most emotional speeches of Obama’s presidency—at times he wiped back tears as he remembered children killed by gun violence.
TRANSCRIPT
AMY GOODMAN: President Obama has laid out his plans to take executive action in an attempt to cut gun violence. Part of his plan will result in mandatory background checks for individuals purchasing firearms online or at gun shows. The administration is also calling for the hiring of 200 new federal agents to enforce the nation’s gun laws and $500 million to increase access to mental healthcare.
On Tuesday, President Obama spoke at the White House surrounded by family members of people killed in shootings. It was one of the most emotional speeches of President Obama’s presidency. At times, he was wiping back tears as he remembered children killed by gun violence.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: All of us should be able to work together to find a balance that declares the rest of our rights are also important. Second Amendment rights are important, but there other rights that we care about, as well, and we have to be able to balance them, because our right to worship freely and safely, that right was denied to Christians in Charleston, South Carolina, and that was denied Jews in Kansas City, and that was denied Muslims in Chapel Hill and Sikhs in Oak Creek. They had rights, too. Our right to peaceful assembly, that right was robbed from moviegoers in Aurora and Lafayette. Our unalienable right to life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness, those rights were stripped from college kids in Blacksburg and Santa Barbara, and from high schoolers at Columbine, and from first graders in Newtown—first graders—and from every family who never imagined that their loved one would be taken from our lives by a bullet from a gun. Every time I think about those kids, it gets me mad. And by the way, it happens on the streets of Chicago every day.
