Like clockwork, Barack Obama joined the chorus of Democrats politicizing the shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, and issued a public statement via Twitter:
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) August 5, 2019
First, he repeats the debunked myth that America leads the world in mass shootings, a claim he made a number of times during his presidency.
Second, while he notes “the motivations behind these shootings may not yet be fully known,” he proceeds to explain, at length how the El Paso shooting is part of a “dangerous trend” of “troubled individuals who embrace racist ideologies” and then says, “We should soundly reject the language coming out of the mouths of our leaders that feeds a climate of fear and hatred or normalizes racist sentiments; leaders who demonize those who don’t look like us, or suggest that other people, including immigrants, threaten our way of life…”
It’s obvious that Obama was echoing other Democrats who rushed to blame Trump, while not calling him out by name. Worse yet, while Obama felt it necessary to pontificate about the El Paso shooter’s motives and blame Trump (despite the fact he was radicalized before Trump even ran for president) he did not give equal treatment to the Dayton shooter, who, we now know, was a socialist who believed in gun control and supported Elizabeth Warren. Obama also made no public statement following the 2017 congressional baseball shooting when a Bernie Sanders supporter shot at Republican members of Congress. Obama doesn’t see fit to devote any time to shootings that don’t fit the preferred narrative of the left.
While the left is always itching to blame tragedies on Republicans, the NRA, and, since he became president, Donald Trump, they deliberately ignore inconvenient truths about guns and mass shooters that don’t fit their gun control narrative. For example, that an overwhelming majority of mass shooters were raised without their father in the home, the inverse relationship between gun ownership and gun homicides, or that the often-cited 1996 Australian gun confiscation did not work. Instead, the left simply wants to score a few cheap political points to justify more gun control that doesn’t work.
UPDATE, August 6, 8:52 am: President Trump has responded to Barack Obama’s statement by quoting Brian Kilmeade on Fox and Friends:
“Did George Bush ever condemn President Obama after Sandy Hook. President Obama had 32 mass shootings during his reign. Not many people said Obama is out of Control. Mass shootings were happening before the President even thought about running for Pres.” @kilmeade @foxandfriends
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 6, 2019
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