Former President Barack Obama slammed America’s lack of gun control in a recent interview with CBS, claiming that the U.S. should respond to mass shootings by implementing gun laws like Australia, where there is no legal right to own a firearm.
When asked why America can’t emulate Australian gun control, Obama made no mention of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing the right to bear arms, he merely claimed that gun rights have become an “ideological” and “partisan issue.”
In the same interview, the former president also lamented the “splintered media” environment Americans live in, saying it makes citizens occupy “different realities.”
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“That is normally how you would expect a society to respond when your children are at risk,” Obama added.
It’s worth noting that in Australia there is no legal right to gun ownership. The Australian Parliament website plainly states, “First, and in contrast to the position in the United States, there is no legal right to gun ownership. Owning and using a firearm is limited in Australia to people who have a genuine reason and self-protection does not constitute a genuine reason to possess, own or use a firearm.”
Burleson then asked, “Why is it so hard for us to do that?” Obama’s answer didn’t mention the existence of the Second Amendment, it noted gun ownership is tied to the “culture wars.”
Speaking of “culture wars,” Obama mentioned the division in the country driven by “splintered media” elsewhere in the interview.
After Burleson asked, “What keeps you up at night?” Obama responded, “The thing that I’m most worried about is the degree to which we now have a divided conversation, in part because we have a divided media.”
After noting how Americans only had “three TV stations” for news when he was young, he said, “Today what I’m most concerned about is the fact that, because of the splintering of the media, we almost occupy different realities.”