This past Wednesday, the nation was gripped yet again with the news of a school shooting. This time, the scene of the violence was a high school in Parkland, Florida, where a former student returned and opened fire, killing 17 people and wounding many more.
In the aftermath of the shooting, the predictable debate about the need — or lack thereof — for gun control has erupted across the nation. Republican leaders have insisted that, even though the troubled shooter was capable of legally buying the firearm with which he inflicted Wednesday’s mass carnage, there’s no need for gun control.
The president has echoed these Republican leaders’ comments through hardly having made any dramatic steps to enact common sense gun control in the aftermath of the Parkland shooting.
Even though he’s done nothing to actually address it, in a message posted to Twitter on Friday, he acted as though he’s in a position to speak to the gravity of the tragedy.
After it having been announced earlier in the week that he would be visiting Parkland to visit those affected by the tragedy, an early Friday morning Twitter message confirmed that this would seemingly be taking place on Friday.
The president wrote:
‘I will be leaving for Florida today to meet with some of the bravest people on earth – but people whose lives have been totally shattered. Am also working with Congress on many fronts.’
It’s not at all clear what he means when he says that he is “working with Congress on many fronts,” and considering the fact that he doesn’t even explain in his remarks, those “fronts” seem unlikely to be substantive.
It’s not as though the president has even proven himself to be a great “negotiator” in the first place. After failing to negotiate a GOP truce on health care, Congressional Republicans barely got a tax reform bill passed before hurtling into the next issue which is currently trapped in a stalemate — immigration policy.
It’s the president having proven standoffish on immigration policy that pushed the government to a three day shutdown earlier this year.
In other words, it’s not exactly the most promising thing for the president to say he’s “working with Congress on many fronts” considering both the present circumstances of his fellow Republicans’ documented positions on gun control and his past of failing when he’s tried to “work with Congress.”
Calls for gun control have reverberated across American society in the wake of the Parkland shooting — including from students at the affected school itself.
In a segment aired recently on Fox News, Parkland teacher Alicia Blonde ripped into the president and his allies, saying that she doesn’t even care if the president visits, considering the fact that — no matter how many conciliatory Twitter messages he offers — he seemingly remains unwilling to do anything about the proliferation of guns in the U.S.
Incidents like that which unfolded in Parkland have unfolded across the United States in recent weeks and months, with a significant number of school shootings already having taken place this year.
Since January 1 of this year, over 350 Americans — and counting — between the ages of 12 and 17 have been injured or killed in incidents of gun violence.
Even still, the president does nothing.
Check out Twitter’s response to him below.
Featured Image via Win McNamee/Getty Images
