On June 2, President Obama participated in a town hall sponsored by PBS in Elkhart, Indiana. Obama continued to answer questions from the audience after the broadcast was over.
One of those questions was from Doug Rhude, a gun shop owner. Rhude asked Obama why he wanted to “control and restrict and limit gun manufacturers, gun owners and responsible use of guns and ammunition… instead of holding the bad guys accountable for their actions?”
Obama’s answer was eerily prescient. He told Rhude that he had just come from the Situation Room and learned of citizens within the United States who were ISIS sympathizers. But because of the NRA, Obama said, “we’re allowed to put them on the no-fly list when it comes to airlines” but not “prohibit those people from buying a gun.”
Now, any one of these ISIS-sympathizers could “walk in to a gun store or a gun show right now and buy as much — as many weapons and ammo as he can,” Obama said.
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Obama was referring legislation the Senate considered in December, following the mass shooting in San Bernardino, which would have prohibited individuals on the “terrorist watch list” from buying guns. The measure failed, with 54 Senators — including all but one Senate Republican — voting against.
Omar Mateen, the man suspected of murdering 50 people in Orlando on Sunday, was interviewed twice by the FBI in “two terror-related cases.” He was one of the people “on the agency’s radar suspected of being ISIS sympathizers.”
Mateen was placed on a terror watch list, before being taken off in 2014 when the investigation closed. But Mateen was clearly just the sort of individual that Obama was concerned about having easy access to high-powered firearms. He purchased his weapons, including an AR-15, “within the last few days.”