By CHARLES J. LEWIS
President Obama invoked the Newtown school massacre Wednesday in tasking Vice President Joe Biden to come up with ideas on fighting gun violence and in urging House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, to make a deal to avoid the fiscal cliff.
Speaking in the Brady briefing room named for President Ronald Reagan’s press secretary, James Brady, who was gravely wounded in the 1981 assassination attempt against Reagan, Obama asked for speedy congressional action on the recommendations of the Biden group.
“I would hope that our memories aren’t so short that what we saw in Newtown isn’t lingering with us, that we don’t remain passionate about it only a month later,’’ the president said.
In a comment aimed at Boehner and House Republicans, Obama cited the national grieving over the Connecticut massacre and the devastation wrought by Hurricane Sandy and said: “When you think about what we’ve gone through over the last couple of months. . . the country deserves folks to be willing to compromise on behalf of the greater good.’’
Obama said, “If this past week has done anything, it should just give us some perspective. If there’s one thing we should have after this week, it should be a sense of perspective about what’s important.’’
Obama and Boehner are negotiating a package of tax increases and spending cuts against a Jan. 1 deadline — the so-called “fiscal cliff” — when steep spending cuts and tax hikes will go into effect automatically, barring a compromise deal between the administration and Congress.
The president specified that Biden’s group — composed of some Cabinet officers, members of Congress and others — was “not some Washington commission’’ that takes six months to study an issue and then publishes a report that gets pushed aside.
No, the Biden group will be different, Obama said.
He gave them a tight deadline: One month.
He promised to actively push their recommendations, “without delay.’’
And, citing what he said was a growing consensus for some specific policies, Obama outlined what he thought those recommendations might be:
- Banning “military-style assault rifles” such as the Bushmaster AR-15 used by 20-year-old Adam Lanza to murder 20 children and six educators last Friday in Newtown, Conn.
- Banning the sale of high-capacity ammunition clips.
- Criminal background checks on all gun purchases, including those between private individuals at gun shows.
During his 35-minute meeting with reporters, the president also briefly mentioned two non-legislative sectors: Improving access to mental health care and re-examining “a culture that all too often glorifies guns and violence.’’
Obama said guns were a “complex issue that stirs deeply held passions and political divides.’’ He praised “the vast majority of gun owners” as responsible and law-abiding, and told reporters: “I believe that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to bear arms.’’
The vast majority of gun owners would “be some of the first to say that we should be able to keep an irresponsible law-breaking few from buying a weapon of war,’’ he said
To change, it’s going to take a wave of Americans _ including gun owners _ to stand up and say “enough,” Obama said.
It also will take courage, he said, citing Dawn Hochsprung, principal at Sandy Hook Elementary School, who was killed in the attack.
“If those of us who were sent here to serve the public trust can summon even one tiny iota of the courage those teachers, that principal in Newton, summoned on Friday,’’ steps can be taken to make the nation safer for children, he said.
Jake Tapper, the White House reporter for ABC News, noting that there have been other episodes of horrible gun violence during his administration, asked Obama: “Where have you been?’’
Obama replied that he has been busy dealing with the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, the near collapse of the auto industry and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. “I don’t think I’ve been on vacation.’’
The Newtown shootings should be a “wake-up call,’’ he said, to focus on ways to keep children safe.
Norman Ornstein, a senior Washington analyst with the American Enterprise Institute, said Obama was motivated to delegate the gun issue to Biden and his group to de-personalize the policy recommendations and reduce any opposition based on anti-Obama sentiment. “He wants to make it appear that these aren’t just his ideas,’’ Ornstein said.
