On Friday three people, two civilians and one police officer, were killed in a shooting at a Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs, Colo. The gunman, later identified as Robert Dear, staged a five-hour standoff with police and was ultimately arrested. In response to the shooting, President Obama has releasedyet another statement calling for stricter gun control laws:
The last thing Americans should have to do, over the holidays or any day, is comfort the families of people killed by gun violence—people who woke up in the morning and bid their loved ones goodbye with no idea it would be for the last time.
Obama also mourned the loss of the three victims and praised officer Garrett Swasey for putting himself in harm's way as he tried to save innocent bystanders.
This statement echoes the speech President Obama delivered after the shooting at Oregon's Umpqua Community College in early October that left 13 dead. "Somehow this has become routine," he said then. "The reporting is routine, my response here at this podium ends up being routine, the conversation in the aftermath of it, we've become numb to this. It cannot be this easy for somebody who wants to inflict harm on other people to get his or her hands on a gun."
