President Barack Obama said Tuesday the gun control proposals under consideration in the U.S. Senate are not about him, but it would take a toll on him personally if they do not pass.
Speaking in Connecticut, the President made a personal appeal to gin up support for his desired gun regulations. “The day Newtown happened was the toughest day of my presidency,” he reminisced. “But I gotta tell you, if we don’t respond to this, that will be a tough day for me too.”
He added, “We’ve got to believe that every once in a while, we set politics aside and just do what’s right. We gotta believe that.”
Chief among Obama’s policy proposals is an expansion of background checks to include private sales. The guns used by Adam Lanza, the perpetrator of the Sandy Hook Elementary massacre, were stolen, which would not have been prevented by universal background checks.
The Los Angeles Times reported Lanza stole the guns because he did not believe he could pass the background checks already required to purchase firearms.
According to Erich Pratt, Gun Owners of America’s communications director, “None of the policies [Obama] recently unveiled would have stopped Adam Lanza in Connecticut from killing his mother, stealing her weapons, and carrying them onto school grounds to commit his despicable crimes.”
Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV) filed a cloture motion Tuesday night for the bill under consideration–S. 649, the “Safe Communities, Safe Schools Act.” If the bill does receive cloture, Senators Rand Paul (R-KY), Ted Cruz (R-TX), Mike Lee (R-UT), and others have vowed to block it with a filibuster in the style of Paul’s 13-hour stand against the Obama administration’s domestic drone policy in March.