Gregory Korte, USA TODAY , WTLV 11:25 PM. EDT June 16, 2016
President Obama and Vice Admiral Biden lay flowers for the victims of the accumulation cutting at a gay bistro Sunday at a canonizing at the Dr. Phillips Centermost for the Assuming Arts. (Photo: SAUL LOEB, AFP/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — Admiral Obama and Vice Admiral Biden placed 49 white roses at a canonizing for the 49 victims of a accumulation cutting at a gay bistro in Orlando Thursday afterwards affair with the families of the victims, badge and hospital workers.
"Our hearts are broken, too. We angle with you," Obama said. "We are actuality for you."
Speaking to reporters afterwards a alternation of affecting clandestine meetings, Obama approved to accede the circuitous mix of motivations and causes of the Orlando attack: Lone-wolf-style killers motivated by advertising from the Islamic State; abhorrence targeted at the gay community; and gun laws that acquiesce accessible admission to advance weapons.
Of those, Obama focused mostly on guns.
"Those who were asleep and afflicted actuality were gunned bottomward by a distinct analgesic with a able advance weapon," Obama said. "The motives of this analgesic may accept been altered than the accumulation killers in Aurora, or Newtown. But the instruments of afterlife were so similar. Now addition 49 innocent bodies are dead. Addition 53 are injured. Some are still angry for their lives."
Calling on the Senate to achieve gun assurance legislation, he challenged opponents of gun ascendancy to accommodated with the families of the Orlando victims. "They don't affliction about politics. Neither do I. This agitation needs to change." Obama said.
"I absolutely achievement that senators acceleration to the moment and do the appropriate thing. We can stop some tragedies. We can save some lives. If we don't act, we will accumulate seeing added massacres like this," he said.
Obama additionally accustomed the role of the alleged Islamic State, additionally accustomed as ISIL, in alarming alarm attacks. But he bound added, "It's activity to booty added than our military," he said.
The admiral additionally bidding abutment for the gay community, adage the cutting marks "a acceptable time for us to reflect on how we amusement anniversary other. We accept to end bigotry and abandon adjoin our brothers and sisters in the LGBT community."
Obama's animadversion to reporters at a assuming arts centermost abreast Orlando City Hall followed clandestine affairs with victims, badge officers, doctors and agents of the Pulse bistro area the cutting happened Sunday.
Landing at Orlando International Airport with Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. and Rep. Corrine Brown, D-Fla., Obama disembarked Air Force One and greeted Gov. Rick Scott and Orange County Mayor Teresa Jacobs, both Republicans. Obama additionally accustomed a T-shirt from Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer, a Democrat.
Obama and Biden again went to the Amway Center, an amphitheatre about two afar from Pulse, area an allegedly self-radicalized aegis guard, Omar Mateen, opened blaze aboriginal Sunday morning.
Outside, abounding association aggregate alfresco the Amway Center, acquisitive to bolt a glimpse of the admiral or his motorcade.
"It shows the benevolence in their hearts they accept for the Americans in this abundant country. And we acknowledge them actuality here," said Vinnie Cannady of the Carter Street Neighborhood Association, captivation a baby American banderole while watching the celebration arrive. "Unfortunately, a adolescent man was absolutely abashed about his character and life. And selfish, to booty innocent lives.
"But he will not stop the adulation in this abundant country," she said.
Obama has added taken on the role of comforter-in-chief during his presidency, as accumulation shootings and alarm attacks accept brought him to communities like Newtown, Conn., Roseburg, Ore. and San Bernardino, Calif., area he's generally met abreast with victims of cutting attacks.
"This is a austere responsibility," White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Wednesday. "This is a albatross that's all the added important back you're talking about the way that the LGBT association in Orlando came beneath advance on Saturday. And signs of abutment and abundance from the admiral of the United States should be a able affirmation for those American citizens."
Contributing: Rick Neale, Florida Today
