Opening his address to the nation, Obama argues that Americans are united

in their grief because the massacre is a national tragedy. A series of words

capturing the agony of the entire nation in mourning of the children were killed
in the massacre such as “grief” “anguish” “scared” reveals the shared distress
of the country, suggesting that the pain and suffering is not only localised to
the families of those dead youths but also widespread and leave substantially
distressing affliction in the hearts of many Americans. Positioning to those
who are directly involved in the aftermath of this disaster, Obama speaks from
the perspective of a wider American population, attempts to soothe the
suffering families by showing the grief and support from all American citizens
in this hard time. Nonetheless, through repetition of similarly structured
sentences start with “it’s not enough” or “it does nothing to”, Obama employs
a sudden tone shift from melancholic to cautionary, emphasising the futility of
pure grief and anguish. Instead, Obama suggests that pain could be only
relieved if actions are to be taken and no more such massacres will ever
occur again in the nation. He urges the American citizens to come to the
realisation, in spite of simply grieving and facing the future with a pessimistic
attitude, that the nation owns a takedown future and the responsibility to
prevent the trauma is to exterminate it immediately. Conveying a strong piece
of anti-gun message, Obama lobbies for the public’s attention on the
unbearable consequence of any gunshot so that they are more propelled to
take actions to persuade their government into the gun restriction.

Having established the pain of families and communities, Obama suggests

that Americans have been desensitised to gun-related atrocities because they
have become common-place. Repetition of the word “routine” paired with list
of cities “Tuscan, after Newtown, after Aurora” exemplifies the high frequency
of shootings in America, revealing the seemingly eternal cycle of gunshot,
deaths and mourn. Whilst the severity of the issue keeps worsening and the
figure of deaths remains even staggering, Obama laments the fact that the
society no longer really pays attention to this critical situation and becomes
“numb” to the prevalent shootings occurring repeatedly in the nation.
Targeting his American voters, Obama aims to alert them and wake them up
from the desensitised status quo. To enhance the necessity to stay alert and
enforce strict gun regulations, Obama presents a giant info graphic in the
background, which compares the level of gun shootings and terrorisms
according the casualties they have led to in the past decade. Via a
comparable stacked line graph, in which the incidence of deaths caused by
terrorism has been seen to decrease dramatically in the last ten year while the
number of Americans lost their lives in domestic gunshot howling up in an
unprecedented rate. A direct reference and proof is provided to back up
Obama’s concern that the nation should no longer neglect the necessity of
enforcing proper gun regulation policies from their local government, either
democratic or republican. Again, Obama encourages American voters,
especially those who are in the middle, to side with him and make the right
decision in this very moment.

Bringing his argument to a close, Obama encourages individuals to vote

carefully because their representatives have the power to shape gun policy.
Obama calls on American people to pressure the government to ‘change
these laws’ which will ‘save lives’. By doing this, Obama suggests he will lead
the fight, however, he needs his fellow Americans to participate in the
enforcement of gun regulation. By explaining that citizens can “save” others,
he first generates a sense of mortal danger then empowers citizens with the
knowledge they can protect themselves and fellow Americans. Consequently,
Obama offers a sense of hope to his people that a solution exists and as a
result, encourages people from both sides of politics to use their vote to
create change. To end his speech, Obama prays to the God to bound them
with ‘strength to come together and find the courage to change”. Reiterating
the hope of achieving a positive change on gun control, Obama concludes his
passage with a rather sacred and sincere sense, appealing to Christians who
take up a major proportion of American population that their president shares
the same concern as they do and holds the same genuine belief as they do.
Addressing the fundamental ideology of Christianity of unity and respect,
Obama creates a melancholic but optimistic atmosphere at the end of his
speech, with his advocacy for humanity moves echoing in his audience’s
mind.