It's Time to Come Together on Gun Control

In the months since the Tucson shootings, 2,405 people have been shot dead, a fact President Obama laments in the Arizona Daily Star. How, he writes, was “a man our Army rejected as unfit for service; a man one of our colleges deemed too unstable for studies; a man apparently bent on violence … able to walk into a store and buy a gun”? The president makes it clear that he does not want to curtail our Second Amendment rights—and notes that his administration has in fact expanded the rights of gun owners—but he writes that something must be done to “keep an irresponsible, law-breaking few … from getting their hands on a gun.”

Specifically, Obama advocates better enforcing background check laws already on the books, making that system "instant, accurate, (and) comprehensive," and rewarding states that “do the most to protect our citizens” by providing the best data. Though “some will say that anything short of the most sweeping anti-gun legislation is a capitulation to the gun lobby” and “others will predictably cast any discussion as the opening salvo in a wild-eyed scheme to take away everybody's guns,” Obama writes, he believes most Americans will agree “that there's room for us to have reasonable laws that uphold liberty, ensure citizen safety, and are fully compatible with a robust Second Amendment.” (More President Obama stories.)