On Thursday, as he has at least a dozen times before, a visibly frustrated President Obama addressed another mass shooting in the U.S., this one the murder of at least nine people at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon. "As I said just a few months ago, and I said a few months before that, and I said each time we see one of these mass shootings, our thoughts and prayers are not enough," Obama said. "This is a political choice that we make to allow this to happen every few months in America. We collectively are answerable to those families who lose their loved ones because of our inaction."
The reaction to the string of high-profile mass murders — Aurora, Colorado; Sandy Hook, Connecticut; Fort Hood, Texas; Washington Navy Yard; Charleston, South Carolina — has become routine and predictable, Obama said. "Also routine is that somebody, somewhere will comment and say, Obama politicized this issue. Well, this is something we should politicize. It is relevant to our common life together, to the body politic." He continued:
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