The Absent Word

Trey Smith

President Obama gave a very emotional and moving speech last night at Newtown High School (read the text in its entirety here). While he stated more than once that we must work to prevent tragedies like this one, there was one key word that was absent from his remarks: Guns.

Here we have this tragedy that was fueled by guns and the President can't even bring himself to say the word! How can we ever hope to prevent future mass murders if we can't simply talk plainly about the one thing that makes them so deadly?

Some people will say that Obama didn't want to politicize this prayer service. I get that. But calling for nebulous change without even providing a hint of what that change might be is quite disingenuous.

Guns are the giant elephant in the room. Again, if our leader can't bring himself to utter the word, what hope is there for any degree of meaningful change?