During his 2013 State of the Union address (SOTU) Obama mentioned guns seven times throughout a five-paragraph push for gun control. In his 2014 SOTU he mentioned guns once, in a short paragraph whose only hint of more gun control was his pledge to continue “trying” to reduce the number of firearm-related tragedies befalling “innocent Americans.”
In 2013 Obama was bold on gun control. He specifically talked of instituting “background checks that will make it harder for criminals to get their hands on a gun,” of stopping straw purchasers from “buying guns for resale to criminals,” and of getting “weapons of war and massive ammunition magazines off our streets.” He cited numerous examples of families that had been touched by the criminal use of a gun and used these examples to try to pressure Congress into giving gun control a vote.
In 2014 Obama’s strongest statement was, “I intend to keep on trying, with or without Congress, to help stop more tragedies from visiting innocent Americans in our movie theaters, shopping malls, or schools like Sandy Hook.”
The contrast between the two speeches may be the clearest indicator to date of just where the collective American psyche stands on gun control. As Breitbart’s John Nolte highlighted earlier Tuesday night, Politico admitted, “the near-omission of gun control from Obama’s speech was a loss for the mainstream media.”
Follow AWR Hawkins on Twitter @AWRHawkins.
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