Obama's Tears for the Dead Children

For a few seconds during his statement following the shooting in the Connecticut school, Barack Obama was the First Father. Moved by the tragedy of the 20 “beautiful children” killed in an instant inside a classroom and thinking about his daughters, Obama wept. With a shaking voice, he wiped his tears and remembered that “now is not the time to discuss gun control.” With these words, the President returned.

Columbine, Virginia Tech., Tucson, Aurora, Oregon, Wisconsin — after every one of these tragedies, it was too early to talk about gun control policies. It was always too soon, and when it wasn’t too soon, it was too late.

This is, perhaps, one of Barack Obama’s greatest failures. When he first ran for president, he promised Americans that he would reinstate the legislature concerning gun control which expired in 2004. Lobbyists were stronger and he quickly retracted. In this year’s campaign, he avoided an answer on the subject.

On the basis of the unbeatable Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, a multibillion-dollar industry was built — one even harder to touch than the medical industry — that has spread over 300 million weapons throughout American homes; thus the U.S. has the highest ratio of guns per capita worldwide.

These guns cause 84 deaths every day and cost the U.S. economy over $100 billion per year. An armed assault with multiple victims takes place every six days in America. Out of all [U.S.] cities, Chicago, Obama’s town, is the bloodiest in this regard. Over 4,000 young people (under the age of 21) were shot here in the last four years. In the case of the small Connecticut town, we are talking about kindergarteners and primary school children, who were killed so quickly that they didn’t even have time to try to escape the classroom. Among the guns that put an end to so many lives was a semiautomatic, as was the case in previous massacres (see Aurora).

No matter how literally this Amendment of the supreme text of U.S. law might be interpreted, the right to own guns is not, and cannot be, more important than one’s right to live — indeed, in this case, than a child’s right to live his life.

As usual, however, mere hours after the Newtown shooting, gun defenders, with ultra-Conservative Rush Limbaugh at the forefront, were warning the public that the unscrupulous Left would take advantage of the emotions of the moment to reopen the topic of stricter gun control. Why is it always the time to defend guns — some of which belong on the battlefield — in the hands of people with serious psychiatric issues, but never the time to talk about gun control?

Another argument that was circulated on blogs and in the U.S. media immediately after the shooting is that Connecticut is one of the strictest states concerning access to guns. Moreover, the attacker had obtained all guns legally, even though his brother declared to police that he was suffering from illnesses or psychological disorders (at first unclear information). These are all boomerang arguments. What does the fact that such an attack was possible in one of the “strictest” states in America say about the country’s gun control situation?

On the other side of the argument stands, as in previous times, New York’s mayor, Michael Bloomberg, one of the biggest supporters of gun control reform.

When he won his first term, Barack Obama had already created a lot of hopes, some completely unrealistic, in the minds of Americans. Healthcare and gun control were two of them. In the case of healthcare, he did not achieve as much as he promised, but he certainly did more than any of his predecessors. Regarding gun control, he achieved nothing. It is the great “outstanding” issue with which his second term begins.

There will never be, however, enough dead children that the “time” will come to take the machine-gun from the hand of the man who claims he needs it for self-defense.