President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden visited the families of the victims of the Orlando nightclub terror attack on Thursday and called for action on gun control.
“I held and hugged grieving family members and parents and they asked why does this keep happening?” Obama said, as the families pleaded for the carnage to stop.
“These families could be our families, in fact they are our families,” said Obama. “They don’t care about the politics, neither do I.”
Omar Mateen, 29, opened fire with a Sig Sauer MCX assault-style rifle at the Pulse nightclub on June 2, killing 49 and injuring 53.
Gun Laws
The president called for action on assault weapons, saying everyone at “every level” has to work together to “stop killers who want to terrorize us.”
Obama noted that the weapons used by Mateen at the nightclub were similar to the ones used by James Holmes in an Aurora, Colo., movie theater in 2012.
“We can’t anticipate or catch every single deranged person ... But we can do something about the damage that they do,” said Obama.
“Unfortunately, our politics have conspired to make it as easy as possible for a terrorist or just a disturbed individual like those in Aurora and Newtown to buy extraordinarily powerful weapons—and they can do so legally.”
The debate needs to change, Obama said, “It’s outgrown the old political stalemates.”
