President Barack Obama took his emotional anti-gun campaign to Minnesota today, and reiterated again his support for gun-control measures that score well among urban voters.
“No law or set of laws can keep our children completely safe, but if there’s even one thing we can do, if there’s even one life we can save, we’ve got an obligation to try,” said Obama, whose soft-focus message hit several emotional points, including the December murder of 20 children in Connecticut’s Sandy Hook Elementary School.
“If we are serious about preventing the kind of tragedies that happened in Newtown … Chicago, Philadelphia or Minneapolis, then law-enforcement and other community leaders must have a seat at the table,” he said, as numerous male and female police officers stood behind.
The police, Obama said, “see the awful consequences — lives lost, families shattered … officers know what it is like to look into the eyes of someone who has lot a relative to violence.”
Obama’s emotional message likely has more political impact than the emphasis placed on legal rights by groups such as the National Rifle Association.
Yet his emotional message arguably wasn’t as powerful as the Jan. 30 testimony by conservative lawyer and activist Gayle Trotter.
“An ‘assault weapon’ in the hands of a young woman defending her babies in her home becomes a defense weapon,” she told the Senate judiciary committee.
“I speak on behalf of millions of American women across the country who urge you to defend our Second Amendment right to choose to defend ourselves,” she declared.
Polls by the Pew Research Center show that 55 percent of Democratic-leaning female college grads, 72 percent of Hispanics, 59 percent of younger voters and 66 percent of African-Americans support “gun controls” over gun rights.
Those groups are significant because they helped Obama win the November 2012 election, yet they tend to have a low turnout during off-year elections.
If Obama can use his restarted 2012 campaign organization, and also stoke several hot-button issues — such as gun control and amnesty — he may be able to help Democrats win a majority of House seats in the 2014 mid-term elections.
The Minnesota visit is also part of a campaign that Obama is waging to pressure GOP legislators to accept gun curbs that are opposed by many GOP voters.
The include a ban on large magazines and on so-called “assault weapons,” which are defined by gun-control advocates as weapons that look like soldiers’ fully automatic weapons.
“Assault weapons” can work as machine guns, and so they’re already tightly restricted and licensed.
If the GOP-controlled House passes the Obama’s gun-control legislation, turnout by the GOP base may be weakened in November 2014.
If the GOP caucus votes against the legislation, Obama can portray GOP legislators in urban districts as unreasonable and threatening to children.
The curbs “deserve a vote in Congress, because weapons of war have no place in our schools and streets,” said Obama.
Throughout his speech, Obama mixed his emotional message with offers of reasonable compromise. He told listeners that gun-control advocates should recognize the needs of rural voters, that gun curbs can protect police and that he backs “prevention” measures, such as increased spending on “mental health” programs.
“It is really important of us to negotiate with folks that don’t agree with us on everything. … We have to recognize there will be regional differences and geographic differences.”
“We don’t have to agree on everything to agree to do something — that’s my main message her today,” he claimed.
However, Obama did not call for any measures favored by conservatives. Those measures include greater government support for intact families, for school choice, and greater use of concealed-carry laws which allow people to carry handguns for self-defense.
Obama did use the event to push his controversial nominee to run the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Todd Jones is facing increasing criticism for his handling of criminal investigations in nearby Milwaukee.
