"I was disgusted and appalled by the inaction," the former president told Oprah.
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Nov 13, 2020 Video
"I was disgusted and appalled by the inaction."
- Oprah will sit down with former President Barack Obama on the next episode of The Oprah Conversation, out November 17.
- The episode will premiere on AppleTV+ on Tuesday, November 17, and will be free to stream until December 1.
- In this clip, Obama opens up about the difficult days in his presidency following the Sandy Hook shooting.
For many Americans, the
shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT is burned into our memories, a devastating testament to the destruction of gun violence. On December 14, 2012, an armed gunman
claimed the lives of 26 people—20 children and six adults, employees of the school.
Former president Barack Obama addresses the tragedy and its reverberations in U.S. history in the next episode of
The Oprah Conversation, premiering on Apple TV+ on November 17. The interview coincides with the publication of
Obama's memoir, A Promised Land, which covers his eight years in the White House.
While speaking to Oprah, Obama says no event in his presidency enraged him more than Sandy Hook. "That was not only the saddest day of my presidency. But when Congress failed to do anything in the aftermath of Sandy Hook, that was the angriest I ever was in my presidency. I was disgusted and appalled by the inaction," Obama said.
At the time, the shocking nature of the Sandy Hook shooting seemed like it could be a turning point for gun reform in the U.S. One month after the tragedy, a
bill was introduced to Congress that would ban military-style assault weapons like the one used during the shooting. In April 2013, the Assault Weapons Ban of 2013, which the
Washington Post called an "ambitious effort to overhaul the nation’s gun laws,"was defeated in the Republican-majority Senate.
"I was disgusted and appalled by the inaction."
"You had parents that had just lost their children sitting in front of senators asking for very modest, reasonable approaches. This wasn't some radical agenda. They were asking for more effective background checks and other provisions to keep firearms out of the hands of disturbed folks. And it was all viewed as politics, as opposed to this human moment we should have been able to respond to as a society," Obama continued.
As anyone who has watched the news since 2013 knows, the Sandy Hook shooting did not put an end to gun violence in the United States, and certainly not to gun violence in schools. According to the
L.A. Times, there have been more than 180 shootings on school campuses that resulted in an injury or death in the U.S. since Sandy Hook.
The shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida in February 2018 unleashed another wave of activism, with
teenage survivors like Emma González and David Hogg swiftly leading the charge. The
March For Our Lives rally, advocating for legislation to prevent gun violence, took place at the nation's capitol, and in cities around the world only five weeks after the shooting.
The parents of the children killed at Sandy Hook continue to fight for reform to this day. "It is re-traumatizing to live this over and over and over again," Nelba Marquez-Greene, who lost her six-year-old daughter in Sandy Hook, told
NPR in 2020. "We have learned that people will move on. Attention spans are short, and as big as this is right now, we know that people will move on."
Still, the topic of gun control remains extremely divisive–and Obama doesn't see that changing in the future. If anything, the opposite of gun control is happening: Gun sales to first-time owners skyrocketed amid the unrest of 2020, per
NBC.
"I have to say, gun violence is one of those issues that I think we're far away from the 'promised land' on. It's become such a cultural hot button issue. It's become wrapped up with people's sense of identity and the degree to which the country's divided," Obama said. "It's gotten very polarized. Unwinding that polarization around that issue is going to take some time."