Barack Obama is again lecturing America, and again getting it wrong.

Only Barack Obama can take a bad situation and make it worse. It is his singular talent. 

The former president weighed-in on the Colorado shooting with his signature blend of self centeredness and pandering condescendence. 

He wrote: Enough is enough. 

Michelle and I grieve with the families of the victims of the shooting in Boulder, just as we grieve with the families of the people killed in Atlanta and everyone else who has lost a loved one to gun violence.

We are also grateful for the courage of Officer Eric Talley, who ran into danger to protect others, and we hope his memory and the memory of all those we’ve lost will not be in vain. Because in addition to grief, we are also feeling a deep, familiar outrage that we as a nation continue to tolerate these kinds of random, senseless acts day in and day out without taking any significant action — an outrage that people in Colorado have known far too often over the years.

In so many ways, our lives may soon start to return to normal after a long, difficult year filled with so much loss. But in a normal life, we should be able to buy groceries without fear. We should be able to go to school, or go out with our friends, or worship together without mentally planning our escape if someone shows up with a gun. We should be able to live our lives without wondering if the next trip outside our home could be our last.

We should. But in America, we can’t.

It is long past time for those with the power to fight this epidemic of gun violence to do so. It will take time to root out the disaffection, racism and misogyny that fuels so many of these senseless acts of violence. But we can make it harder for those with hate in their hearts to buy weapons of war. We can overcome opposition by cowardly politicians and the pressure of a gun lobby that opposes any limit on the ability of anyone to assemble an arsenal. We can, and we must.

This is why so many Americans were happy to see the blunt-talking President Trump. 

This is also b.s.

While he was a state lawmaker in Illinois, Obama refused to do anything about the weekly mass shootings in Chicago. Same during his time as a U.S. Senator. And during his presidency all he did was lecture. 

Now, let's be clear. Any murder is a tragedy, whether its one at a time or 10. We do live in a country where far too many people are shot and killed. But the former president is off-base to say that racism and misogyny drives our gun violence problem. 

Drugs, domestic violence, and a culture that disrespects life drives the problem with gun violence in America. 

Obama knows this. He lived in Chicago. That is one of America’s most dangerous cities. And it’s not because of white Trump voters with rifles.

Photo Credit: Getty Images.


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