Obama visits shooting victims’ families
His ramped- up calls for regulations draw protesters
After offering condolences to relatives of last week’s shooting victims in Oregon, President Obama said Friday the nation should “come together” and figure out how to prevent mass killings in the future.
“I’ve obviously got very strong feelings about this,” Obama said during brief remarks after meeting with family members at a high school in Roseburg, Ore.
Obama, who last week called for more gun control and said he planned to politicize the issue in the week of this latest shooting, kept his remarks short, saying, “we’re going to have to come together as a country, but today is about the families.”
As Obama prepared tomeet with relatives of the eight students and teacher killed during the shooting at Umpqua Community College, gun rights supporters gathered in Roseburg to protest the president’s visit with signs, flags and guns in tow.
“Obama is just doing this to make himself look good,” said Leslie Corp, 62, of Wolf Creek, Ore., holding a yellow “Don’t Tread On Me” flag.
The day of the shooting, Obama amplified his call for new restrictions on guns, including expanded background checks, and said lawmakers have failed to confront a deadly increase in mass shootings.
In protesting the president’s trip, gun owners said his proposals would be ineffective and violate constitutional rights. Along the motorcade route from the airport to the high school, protesters carried signs that read “Obama Go Home” and “Gun Free Zones Are For Sitting Ducks.” Some of the protesters carried guns.
Diane Koenig, 56, who traveled from Kalama, Wash., to be part of the protest, said that “if therewas a person there who had a gun” at the college when the shooting took place, “I think the outcome would have been different.”
Others carried signs welcoming Obamato Oregon.