What the president said was --
"I would ask news organizations because I won’t put these facts forward. Have news organizations tally up the number of Americans who have been killed through terrorist attacks in the last decade, and the number of Americans who have been killed by gun violence and post those side by side on your news reports. This won’t be information coming from me. It will be coming from you."
As a result of his comments, a couple of publicans have already followed up on the president's request. This first is from the Washington Post.
Interestingly, in regards to this, the story that the Post published with this chart was one that had originally been published previously, only a month ago on August 27. The president had given an interview to a a local TV station in Philadelphia, and "drew a distinction between the effects of gun violence and terrorism." What he said at the time, just a month earlier was --
"What we know is that the number of people who die from gun-related incidents around this country dwarfs any deaths that happen through terrorism."
The chart that the Post used above supported this, easily. I also came across another chart that was published today, as well, that tells the same story, from just in a slightly different perspective. This compares the number of terrorism deaths since 9/11 to the number of gun deaths last year and this year so far --
None of this is to suggest that gun deaths are more -- or less -- important than those lives lost from terrorism, or that the potential of a cataclysmic physical and emotional loss from terrorism isn't a realistic concern. Just that if one considers the national resources and changes to the law as a result of governmental (and public) focus on terrorism, then if Congress put only a small percentage of that effort into addressing gun deaths, as well, which are monumentally more numerical (by these numbers, 2,000 times more) and have their own devastating physical and emotional impact on the nation, then perhaps we can move towards addressing such a crushing national problem.
Guns don't kill people, people with guns kill people. And kill them and kill them, by the tens of thousands every year after year.