- MENU
- HOME
- SEARCH
- WORLD
- MAIN
- AFRICA
- ASIA
- BALKANS
- EUROPE
- LATIN AMERICA
- MIDDLE EAST
- United Kingdom
- United States
- Argentina
- Australia
- Austria
- Benelux
- Brazil
- Canada
- China
- France
- Germany
- Greece
- Hungary
- India
- Indonesia
- Ireland
- Israel
- Italy
- Japan
- Korea
- Mexico
- New Zealand
- Pakistan
- Philippines
- Poland
- Russia
- South Africa
- Spain
- Taiwan
- Turkey
- USA
- BUSINESS
- WEALTH
- STOCKS
- TECH
- HEALTH
- LIFESTYLE
- ENTERTAINMENT
- SPORTS
- RSS
- iHaveNet.com
Jules Witcover
President Obama, in his poignant remarks in Newtown, Conn., to the grieving parents and friends of the 20 little boys and girls and six adults slaughtered in the grade-school massacre, pledged to use "whatever power this office holds" to at last end such violence. But how? And when?
After the president's apparent tearing-up in his first public comments at the
The catastrophe cried out for much more than expressed sympathy, and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg wasted no time saying the obvious: that the time was long overdue for the president to stand up to the American gun lobby, and call for a halt to the sale, ownership and carrying of assault weapons made for the battlefield, not the streets and the schoolrooms of America.
With pressures mounting and Carney saying only action would be taken "in coming weeks," The
Obama in his Newtown remarks had danced around the point, asking: "Are we really prepared to say that we're powerless in the face of such carnage, that the politics are too hard? Are we prepared to say such violence on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?"
That veiled reference to the
Many other citizens, however, have cried out that there could be no better time to rally the aroused and revolted public to action. One who thought so was Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California.
She declared that she will introduce a bill when the new
At a minimum, however, a nationwide program of voluntary surrender of such killing devices, perhaps by government repurchase, might begin to answer that glaring problem, while certainly incurring the wrath of the NRA. Such an approach would answer Obama's question of whether "the politics are too hard" to take head-on the NRA's lobbying powerhouse and its ludicrous defense that "guns don't kill people, people do."
Notably, several NRA members in the
In this holiday season, some may think that it would be bad taste as well as bad politics for the president to throw a damper on the spirit of St. Nicholas by declaring war on the gun lobby. So the country will have to wait for the president to offer specifics on how he intends to deal with this most heart-wrenching example of the price America pays for its home-grown gun culture.
WORLD | AFRICA | ASIA | EUROPE | LATIN AMERICA | MIDDLE EAST | UNITED STATES | ECONOMICS | EDUCATION | ENVIRONMENT | FOREIGN POLICY | POLITICS
World - Fine Words, Delayed Action | News of the World