Obama Talks Gun Control In Chicago
President Obama visited Hyde Park in Chicago’s South Side on Saturday where he spoke about the need for greater gun control. The POTUS spoke just days after teen Hadiya Pendleton was killed in crossfire brought about by gang violence.
Speaking to the crowd, Obama said he is trying to “work towards giving every child every chance in life.” The President also admitted that violence isn’t “just a gun issue.”
While Obama admitted the issue extended beyond guns, he managed to avoid talking about gangs and other acts of violence throughout his speech. Rapidly increasing gang violence has become a major contributing factor to violence in Chicago in recent years.
Present Obama spoke of gun violence at a time when gun related death increased in Chicago by 20 percent in 2012.
Speaking of the cities violence, Chicago Police Department Chief Leo Schmitz revealed:
“It’s crazy. What used to be a fist fight now turns into, ‘Let’s go to the guns.'”
Using child deaths as the backdrop to his speech, President Obama called the violence “children shooting children.”
The President then added:
“When a child opens fire on another child, there is a hole in that child’s heart that government can’t fill, only community and parents and teachers and clergy can fill that hole. There are entire neighborhoods where young people, they don’t see an example of somebody succeeding. For a lot of young boys and young men in particular, they don’t see an example of fathers or grandfathers, uncles who are in a position to support families and be held up and respected.”
Following his State of the Union speech, President Obama added:
“The experience of gun ownership is different in urban areas than it is in rural areas, different from upstate and downstate Illinois. But these proposals deserve a vote in Congress. They deserve a vote. And I want to thank those members of Congress who are working together in a serious way to try to address this issue.”
Do you agree with President Obama’s gun control goals?
