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  • Obama Calls For Gun Control In Wake Of Church Shooting, Slams America

    06.18.2015 | News | |

    President Obama called for greater gun control during a White House statement Thursday in the wake of the mass shooting at a South Carolina church.

    Obama said he and his wife personally knew Emanuel African Episcopal Church Pastor and state Sen. Clementa Pinckney, as well as several in the congregation, who were murdered on Wednesday night  by 21year old Dylann Storm Roof.

    “To say our thoughts and prayers are with them and their families and their community doesn’t say enough to convey the heartache and the sadness and the anger that we feel,” Obama said at the White House.

    The President then claimed that such “mass murder” just doesn’t happen in other countries and refocused his attention on gun control.

    “Now’s the time for mourning and for healing, but let’s be clear — at some point we as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries,” Obama said. “It doesn’t happen in other places with this kind of frequency. And it is in our power to do something about it.

    “I say that recognizing the politics in this town foreclose a lot of those avenues right now. But it would be wrong for us not to acknowledge it, and at some point it’s going to be important for the American people to come to grips with it and for us to be able to shift how we think about the issue of gun violence collectively.”

    “We do know that once again, innocent people were killed in part because someone who wanted to inflict harm had no trouble getting their hands on a gun,” Obama said. “At some point, we as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this kind of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries. It doesn’t happen in other places with this kind of frequency. It is in our power to do something about it.”

    Police say Roof entered Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal church Wednesday night and opened fire, killing nine people. He was captured late Thursday morning in Shelby, North Carolina, at a location about three-and-a-half-hours’ drive from the church and was described as a loner by police.

    John Mullins, who went to high school with Roof,  remembers him as being “kind of wild.”

    “He used drugs heavily a lot,” Mullins said. “It was obviously harder than marijuana. He was like a pill popper, from what I understood. Like Xanax, and stuff like that.”

    If President Obama truly wants to prevent tragic incidences like this from reoccurring he could highlight the detriments of drug use, or place emphasis on the way mental illness is treated, rather than politicizing the tragedy to tout gun control.

    The weapon Dylann Roof used is not confirmed, but his father reportedly gave him a .45 caliber handgun as a birthday gift.

    Universal background check law, banning certain types of ammunition and unilateral executive actions signed by Obama to quell gun violence still won’t stop mentally ill people from murdering the innocent or prevent criminals from breaking laws to get guns.


    Alicia Powe

    Staff Writer

    Alicia Powe is a staff writer for Daily Surge. She worked in the War Room of the Rudy Giuliani Presidential Committee and served as a White House Intern during the George W. Bush administration. Alicia has written for numerous outlets, including Human Events, Media Research Center and Townhall.com.

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