Second amendment rights are important, but there are other rights that we care about
as well and we have to be able to balance them.
Because our right to worship freely and safely, that right was denied to Christians in Charleston,
South Carolina and that was denied Jews in Kansas City, and that was denied Muslims in
Chapel Hill, and Sikhs in Oak Creek—they had rights too.
Our right to peaceful assembly, that right was robbed from moviegoers in Aurora and Lafayette.
Our unalienable right to life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness, those rights
were stripped from college kids in Blacksburg and Santa Barbara, from high schoolers at
Columbine, and from first graders in Newtown…first graders.
And from every family who never imagined that their loved one would be taken from our lives
by a bullet.
Every time I think about those kids it gets me mad.
And by the way, it happens on the streets of Chicago everyday.
So, all of us need to demand that Congress brave enough to stand up, to gun lobby’s
lies, all of us need to stand up and protect our citizens.
All of us need to demand governors and legislators and businesses do their part to make our communities
safer.
We need the wide majority of responsible gun owners who agree with us every time this happens,
and feel like your views are not being properly represented to join with us to demand something
better.
We need voters who want safer gun laws, and who are disappointed in leaders who stand
in their way, to remember come election time.
I mean some of this is just simple math.
Yes, the gun lobby is loud and it is organized in defense of making it effortless for guns
to be available for anybody anytime.
But you know what, the rest of us, we all have to be just as passionate, we have to
be just as organized in defense of our case.
This is not that complicated.
The reason congress blocks laws is because they want to win elections.
If you make it hard for them to win an election if they block those laws, they’ll change
course, I promise you.
And yes it will be hard.
And it won’t happen overnight.
It won’t happen during this congress.
It won’t happen during my presidency.
But a lot of things don’t happen overnight.
Women’s right to vote didn’t happen overnight.
The liberation of African Americans didn’t happen overnight.
LGBT rights was decades worth of work.
So just ‘cause it’s hard, that’s no excuse not to try.
And if you have any doubt as to why you should feel that fierce urgency of now, think about
what happened three weeks ago.
Zaevion Dobson was a sophomore at Fulton High School in Knoxville, Tennesee.
He played football and was loved by his classmates and his teachers.
His own mayor called him one of the town’s success stories.
The week before Christmas he headed to a friend’s house to play video games—he wasn’t in
the wrong place at the wrong time, he hadn’t made a bad decision.
He was exactly where any other kid would be—your kid, my kids.
And then gunman started firing.
Zaevion, who was in high school, hadn’t even gotten started in life, dove on top of
three girls to shield them from the bullets.
He was shot in the head and the girls were spared.
He gave his life to save theirs.
An act of heroism bigger than anything we should ever expect from a 15 year old.
“Greater love hath no man than this.”
A man laid down his life for his friends.
We are not asked to do what Zaevion Dobson did.
We are not asked to have shoulders that big, a heart that strong, reactions that quick.
I’m not asking people to have that same level of courage, or sacrifice, or love.
But if we love our kids and care about their prospects, and if we love this country and
care about its future, then we can find the courage to vote.
We can find the courage to get mobilized and organized, we can find the courage to cut
through all the noise and do what a sensible country would do.
That’s what we’re doing today, and tomorrow we should do more, and we should do more the
day after that.
And if we do, we’ll leave behind a nation that’s stronger than the one we inherited
and worthy of the sacrifice of a young man like Zaevion.
Thank you very much everybody.