CHICAGO (AP) — President Barack Obama's support for gun control has its roots in a hometown plagued by deadly shootings —
a city, he said Friday, where as many children die from guns every four months as were slaughtered at Sandy Hook school in
Connecticut.
Obama told a Chicago audience that
high-profile mass shootings are one part of a national tragedy created
not just by guns
but by communities where there is too little hope. As a result, he
said, "too many of our children are being taking away from
us."
It was an emotional return to a city whose
recent shooting victims have included Hadiya Pendleton, a 15-year-old
drum majorette
gunned down a mile from Obama's Chicago home just days after she
performed at the president's inauguration in Washington.
Standing before Hyde Park Academy students in their navy uniform
shirts, the president said 65 children were killed by gun
violence last year in Chicago. "That's the equivalent of a Newtown
every four months," Obama said. Twenty children were among
the dead in the Newtown massacre.
"This is not just a gun issue," Obama said.
"It's also an issue of the kinds of communities that we're building, and
for that
we all share responsibility as citizens to fix it. We all share a
responsibility to move this country closer to our founding
vision, that no matter who you were or where you come from, here
in America, you can decide your own destiny."
Obama was a reliable vote in favor of gun control as a state senator in the late 1990s, with one important exception that
contributed to his only electoral loss. While running for the Democratic primary for a House seat in 1999, Obama missed a
vote on a gun control measure that narrowly failed, an episode that he later said cost him any chance to win.
Gun control was not on Obama's agenda in his
first term as president. But now, at the start of his second term,
Obama is seizing
an opportunity to act that emerged from national outrage over the
Newtown shooting in December. He is pushing measures including
background checks for all gun purchases and a ban on assault
weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines, even as both
sides in the debate doubt he'll be able to achieve the full
package.
"These proposals deserve a vote in Congress," Obama said in his Hyde Park Academy visit. It's rhetoric he also used in the
State of the Union address Tuesday.
Earlier Friday at the White House, Obama
honored the six educators killed in the Connecticut shooting by
presenting the Presidential
Citizens Medal to their families. "They gave their lives to
protect the precious children in their care," Obama said.
In Chicago, Obama mourned the death of Pendleton, whose funeral Michelle Obama had attended. "Unfortunately, what happened
to Hadiya's not unique," the president said. "It's not unique to Chicago, it's not unique to this country. Too many of our
children are being taken away from us."
Critics of Obama's effort note that
Chicago's spike in homicides offers evidence gun restrictions don't
work. The city prohibited
handguns until a 2010 Supreme Court ruling threw out the ban.
Chicago then adopted a strict gun ordinance that requires gun
owners to be fingerprinted, undergo a background check, pass a
training class and pay fees that can be higher than the price
of the weapons. Still, the city's homicide rate rose to more than
500 last year.
Gun control proponents say Chicago
illustrates the need for tougher restrictions nationally because guns
are coming from outside
the city. Statistics show that more than half of the guns seized
by Chicago police in the last 12 years came from other states.
A University of Chicago study found that more than 1,300 guns
confiscated by police since 2008 were purchased at a single
store just outside city limits. More than 270 were used in crimes.
Violence has long been a problem in Chicago,
a city the president represented for eight years in the state Senate
while building
a record of voting for gun control. He invoked the ire of gun
rights advocates when he voted against a measure that would
have exempted prosecution of people who fire guns to fend off home
invaders, inspired by a man who shot an intruder who repeatedly
broke into his home.
"It became very obvious he was not going to
be one of our guys," said Richard Pearson, president of the Illinois
State Rifle
Association. He said it wasn't that surprising, given the city
that Obama represented. "You're not allowed to be a politician
from Chicago and support gun rights," Pearson said with a laugh.
In 1999, Obama made his first run for
national office by entering the Democratic primary race for Congress
against incumbent
Rep. Bobby Rush. In October 1999, Rush's son was fatally shot by
drug dealers outside his home, and Obama suspended his campaign
for a month.
That December, Obama announced he would push
federal gun legislation that goes far beyond than what he is proposing
now. It
would have limited gun purchases to one a month, banned the sale
of firearms other than antiques at gun shows, limited the
sale of guns to adults over 21 who took a training course and
increased gun licensing fees. He also would have increased the
penalties on gun runners and brought a felony charge against
owners who didn't lock up firearms that were later stolen and
used in a crime.
He announced the antigun plan near the home of an 84-year-old woman killed when several young men invaded her home mistakenly
believing she won the lottery.
But Obama went to his native Hawaii for the
Christmas holiday to see his grandmother and spend time with his wife
and then
18-month-old daughter, Malia. He wrote in his autobiography "The
Audacity of Hope" about how the Legislature was called back
into special session while he was gone, but Malia was sick and
unable to fly home.
"I got off the redeye at O'Hare Airport, a
wailing baby in tow, Michelle not speaking to me, and was greeted by a
front page
story in the Chicago Tribune indicating that the gun bill had
fallen a few votes short, and that state senator and congressional
candidate Obama 'had decided to remain on vacation' in Hawaii,"
Obama wrote. "My campaign manager called, mentioning the potential
ad the congressman might be running soon — palm trees, a man in a
beach chair and straw hat sipping a mai tai, a slack key
guitar being strummed softly in the background, the voice-over
explaining, 'While Chicago suffered the highest murder rate
in its history, Barack Obama...'
"I stopped him there, having gotten the idea," Obama continued. "And so, less than halfway into the campaign, I knew in my
bones that I was going to lose."
It would be his only loss. Obama went on to win the U.S. Senate race in 2004 and then the presidency just four years later.
He brought Rush along on Air Force One on Friday when he flew home.