In response to a question about the Planned Parenthood shooting in Colorado, President Obama went back to a familiar talking point, claiming mass shootings are unique to America.
“I say this every time we have one of these mass shootings. This just doesn’t happen in other countries,” he said during a press conference in Paris today.
The only problem with his answer was that he was standing in Paris, where a mass shooting conducted by Islamic State terrorists had just taken place, killing over 100 people.
Obama followed up his statement acknowledging that America was “rightly determined to prevent terrorist attacks wherever they occur” but seemed to separate the two events in his mind.
He argued that since the United States was determined to fight terrorism, it was important for Americans to demand more gun control as well.
“We devote enormous resources, and properly so, to rooting out networks and debilitating organizations like ISIL and maintaining the intelligence and improving the information sharing that can identify those who would try to kill innocent people,” he said. “And yet, in the United States, we have the power to do more to prevent what is just a regular process of gun homicides.”
He urged Congress and State and local governments to make changes on gun laws to prevent people who were “deranged” or had “violent tendencies” from killing in the United States.
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