Responding to another high-profile episode of gun violence, President Barack Obama told the American people on Saturday that “we have to do something about the easy accessibility of weapons of war on our streets to people who have no business wielding them.”
Obama’s statement talked up gun control efforts a day after a shooting at a Planned Parenthood building in Colorado Springs killed three people.
“The last thing Americans should have to do, over the holidays or any day, is comfort the families of people killed by gun violence,” Obama said. “And yet, two days after Thanksgiving, that’s what we are forced to do again.”
“This is not normal. We can’t let it become normal,” he added. “Enough is enough.”
On Friday, two civilians and a police officer were killed when a gunman opened fire — leading to a nearly six hour standoff — at a Colorado Planned Parenthood clinic. Police arrested the suspected gunman, but the motive for the shooting was not immediately known.
Vicki Cowart, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, said in a statement that a possible cause for the shooting is that “extremists are creating a poisonous environment that feeds domestic terrorism in this country.”