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Obama On Guns: 'Our Inaction Is A Political Decision'

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

President Obama spoke this week of what he calls the routine - word of another mass shooting, terrified witnesses, the count of the fatalities then the names of those killed. At a news conference the day after the shootings on the college campus in Oregon, the president said he was getting tired of this cycle of bloodshed, loss, brave vows but no new action.

(SOUNDBITE OF PRESS CONFERENCE)

BARACK OBAMA: So the main thing I'm going to do is I'm going to talk about this on a regular basis, and I will politicize it because our inaction is a political decision that we are making.

SIMON: We turn now to NPR senior editor and correspondent Ron Elving. Ron, thanks so much for being with us.

RON ELVING, BYLINE: Good to be with you, Scott.

SIMON: It seemed to me this was a little new - the president saying, yes, I'm going to be politicize this loss 'cause politics is why nothing changes. Is he past trying to appeal to Congress?

ELVING: He is appealing to Congress, and when he says he's going to politicize this, that's a word, of course, a lot of people don't like. They say, oh, you shouldn't politicize a tragedy. But he's saying, yeah, we ought to politicize the response to this tragedy because there are bills in Congress that would expand the Brady background check that now applies only to federally licensed gun dealers and make it apply to gun shows, make it apply online, so that people who are identified mental health patients, people who are convicted criminals and people who are the domestic abusers cannot get weapons and at least cannot get them as easily and in the quantities that they have been doing. Those our bills that are before Congress right now and that Congress could act on. The president is saying I'm going to pressure them.

SIMON: Seems to be a clear division when one of these crimes occurs - people who see crimes - these crimes - as a failure of mental health treatment or access and those who see it as a compelling case for more strict gun laws. Do they just look at the same event and see it altogether differently?

ELVING: Yes, sadly. The president is quite right that there are always going to be people who see the one issue or see the other issue and don't see how the two go together or see any bridge between them. You know, you talk about the frequency. This is the 45th shooting at a school - 45th shooting at a school - in calendar 2015. The president's been in office two-and-a-half years in this term. There has not been a week that has gone by without an incident of at least four Americans being shot at the same time. So mass shootings, they are becoming routine. And if people are desensitized to it, as the president suggests we have all, to some degree, become, then it goes away. It goes away again until it happens again. And by just talking about these issues as though they had no relation to each other - the guns, the mental health - you're allowing that to happen.

SIMON: Of course, we have to note another political factor. We're in the middle of a presidential campaign. Would some of Bernie Sanders's supporters be a little surprised at his history on this issue?

ELVING: Bernie Sanders has been representing Vermont in the Congress - in the House and the Senate - for about a quarter century. He did not vote for the Brady gun law. He is seen as a moderate on the issue, which means that he has had some NRA support but has not taken money from NRA. He is not as gung-ho on gun control, as many would expect, given the rest of his highly liberal profile.

SIMON: Jeb Bush, who of course mourns the loss of lives in Oregon, seemed to refer to the shootings there on Friday when he said stuff happens. Pundits have been so wrong about politicians making gaps in this campaign. But how do you see the impact of that remark, stuff happens?

ELVING: This will be put in a catalog of things that he has said that are unfortunate, thus far, in this campaign because they can be so easily seized upon, taken out of context and whatever he may have meant, they can be made into ads that make him sound numb or desensitized on a particular issue. And, in this case, those unfortunate words will probably be used in that fashion.

SIMON: NPR's Ron Elving, thanks so much.

ELVING: Thank you, Scott. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.