Former president Barack Obama on Monday responded to the back-to-back mass shootings that have rocked the country — calling for tougher gun laws and telling Americans to reject comments from leaders that feed fear, hatred and normalize racism.
In a statement posted on Twitter and Facebook, Obama didn’t specifically name any leaders, but condemned those “who 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.”
Such language has been at the root of most human tragedy from slavery, to the Holocaust, to the Rwandan genocide, the ex-president wrote.
“It has no place in our politics and our public life,” he said. “And it’s time for the overwhelming majority of Americans of goodwill, of every race and faith and political party, to say as much — clearly and unequivocally.”
The open letter came hours after President Trump delivered an address about the massacres in El Paso, TX., and Dayton, Ohio, that left 31 people dead and dozens more injured.
Saying “hate has no place in America,” Trump condemned white supremacy and said the Internet had created dangerous, dark recesses where mass murderers are radicalized.
Trump called for increased attention to mental health, for mass shooters to be eligible for the death penalty, and for an end to the “glorification of violence in our society,” mentioning “gruesome and grisly video games.”
Earlier in the day, he had tweeted calls for lawmakers to strengthen background checks for gun purchases, perhaps as part of immigration reform.
Authorities believe the gunman who killed 22 people in an El Paso Walmart had posted a 2,300-word anti-immigrant screed on the website 8chan.
Authorities said they are “not close enough at all” in determining a motive for the shooting in Dayton, where nine people were killed and dozens injured in just 30 seconds.
Obama said that while the motives were not yet known, there are indications the El Paso shooter “follows a dangerous trend: troubled individuals who embrace racist ideologies and see themselves obligated to act violently to preserve white supremacy.”
He compared white nationalist shooters to ISIS followers and noted they: “may act alone, but they’ve been radicalized by white nationalist websites that proliferate on the internet.”
Obama said lawmakers need to be held accountable for changing gun laws, writing that no other nation, “tolerates the level of gun violence we do.”
In 2016, Obama signed an executive order to block people with severe mental illness from purchasing firearms, partly in response to the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting, where 20 first-graders and six others were killed. That rule was slashed by the Trump administration in 2017.
“Every time this happens, we’re told that tougher gun laws won’t stop all murders; that they won’t stop every deranged individual…,” Obama wrote. “But the evidence shows that they can stop some killings. They can save families from heartbreak.”
“We are not helpless here,” Obama continued. “And until all of us stand up and insist on holding public officials accountable for changing our gun laws, these tragedies will keep happening.”
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