With the distressing frequency of shooting rampages across America and continued blocking by US Congress of measures to strengthen gun control laws, President Barack Obama has publicly lamented what he regards as “a creeping resignation” that these tragedies are “somehow the new normal”.
“We cannot accept this,” Obama said at a memorial service on Sunday in honour of the 12 men and women, including Indian-American Vishnu Pandit, who were gunned down in last week’s shooting rampage at the Washington Navy Yard.
“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 ten times what it is in other developed nations,” Obama rued.
He then took a dig at US Congress, where Republican lawmakers have thwarted some of his key initiatives for strong gun control laws, commenting: “There is nothing inevitable about it. It comes about because of decisions we make or fail to make. And it falls upon us to make it different.”
While paying tributes to the victims, he referred to Pandit as someone who lived the American dream, having “left everything he knew in India for this land of opportunity, and raised a wonderful family and dedicated himself to the United States Navy”.
“As Americans bound in grief and love, we must insist here today there is nothing normal about innocent men and women being gunned down where they work. There is nothing normal about our children being gunned down in their classrooms,” said Obama, adding: “It ought to obsess us. It ought to lead us to some sort of transformation.”
Saying tears, words and prayers are not enough, Obama said if the 12 men and women were to be really honoured, America will have to change.
It was the fifth time in his presidency that Obama had spoken at a memorial service after a mass shooting, the earlier ones being at Fort Hood, Texas; Tucson, Arizona; Aurora, Colorado; and Sandy Hook in Connecticut, where 20 children and six adult staffers were gunned down in an elementary school last December that led to Obama’s last major push for stronger gun control laws but failed to get past the Congress.
But America’s powerful gun lobby, led by the National Rifle Association (NRA), let it be known that it is sticking to its guns on enactment of stronger gun control laws.
Hours before Obama’s address, NRA’s executive vice-president Wayne laPierre sought to blame the tragedy on security shortcomings at the Washington Navy Yard, rather than on the easy availability of guns in America.
laPierre, appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press, said the problem was that too many people at the Nay Yard facility were unarmed. “All these brave men and women that are trained in firearms, that signed up to serve in the military, they’re largely disarmed on our military bases,” he said, demanding policy changes to keep more military personnel armed to forestall such tragic situations.