Obama Calls For Tougher Gun Laws After Mass Shootings

Mary Margaret Olohan on August 5, 2019

Former President Barack Obama spoke out in a Monday tweet about mass shootings in the U.S. and called for a rejection of leaders using language that encourages hate, fear or racism.

The former president tweeted a statement from himself and his wife Michelle Obama Monday afternoon, saying that “no other nation on Earth” experiences the number of mass shootings that the United States does.

Barack Obama said the mass shootings of the past weekend in Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso, Texas, show a dangerous trend of “troubled individuals who embrace racist ideologies and see themselves obligated to act violently to preserve white supremacy.”

“But just as important, all of us have to send a clarion call and behave with the values of tolerance and diversity that should be the hallmark of democracy,” Barack Obama said, adding:

“We should strongly reject language coming out of the mouths of any 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, or refer to other people as sub human, or imply that America belongs to just one certain type of people.”

The former president compared this type of language to the language used in other human tragedies throughout history, such as the Holocaust.

He also added in another tweet that “until all of us stand up and insist on holding public officials accountable for changing our gun laws, these tragedies will keep happening.”