President Obama's Many Speeches About Gun Control Still Ring True Today

After last night’s tragic shooting in Las Vegas—a shooting that took the lives of 58 people and is now the deadliest in American history—former US President Barack Obama took to Twitter to deliver a heartfelt message to the country and to those affected.

The thing is, this isn’t the first time President Obama has spoken up following a horrific mass shooting. According to Politico, Obama has pushed for stronger gun control laws at least 17 times throughout his political career. 17. Times. And each of those times was always in response to shootings that devastated communities and took countless lives.

Yet here we are again—in the aftermath of another massively violent, gun-related incident wondering how could it possibly get any worse than it already has, and what we can do to try to stop it in the future.

The answer, as Obama pointed out last year in one of his many teary-eyed pleas to America, is simple: stronger and more sensible gun control laws.

“The United States of America is not the only country on Earth with violent or dangerous people. We are not inherently more prone to violence,” Obama said. “But we are the only advanced country on Earth that sees this kind of mass violence erupt with this kind of frequency. It doesn't happen in other advanced countries. It’s not even close. And as I’ve said before, somehow we’ve become numb to it and we start thinking that this is normal. And instead of thinking about how to solve the problem, this has become one of our most polarized, partisan debates—despite the fact that there’s a general consensus in America about what needs to be done.”

He later continued:

“Each time this comes up, we are fed the excuse that common-sense reforms like background checks might not have stopped the last massacre, or the one before that, or the one before that, so why bother trying. I reject that thinking.”
“We know we can’t stop every act of violence, every act of evil in the world. But maybe we could try to stop one act of evil, one act of violence.”

Of the many, many words Obama has spoken regarding the need for gun control reform in this country, most still ring true today. Hopefully it won’t take another terrible tragedy like Las Vegas for America and its current government to listen to his words and take action.