Audience

Here, we will focus on the audience of President Barack Obama’s remarks on common-sense gun safety reform, including the wider audience who watched the speech through different kinds of media.

Barack Obama delivered his speech on 5th of January, 2016, in the East Room in the White House. Obama addresses both the people in the room (including the relatives of gun-violence victims or mass-shooting survivors) and the wider audience in the US.…

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American voters and victims of gun violence

In the video, the live audience seems to agree with what Obama has to say, given that they often applaud or answer in response to his words (ll. 19-21). At times, when Obama uses humor and is ironic towards Republicans, the audience laughs and is evidently entertained.

Because the spee…

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Gun owners and gun lobbyists

He also refers to the majority of American gun owners, the “responsible” (l. 135) ones, who “agree that we can respect the Second Amendment while keeping an irresponsible, law-breaking feud from inflicting harm on a massive scale.” (ll. 108-111)

At the same time, Obama targets “…

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Republicans

Also, Obama targets two categories of Republicans. On the one hand, he refers to some Republican politicians who agree that gun violence needs to be reduced urgently in the US: George W. Bush, Oat Toomey, John McCain, etc. At the same time, he also targets the Republican critics who constantly accuse him of not r…

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Congress

Obama also addresses Congress and condemns its members for trying to prevent common-sense measures against gun violence from being imposed:

Congress actually voted to make it harder for public health experts to conduct research into gun violence; made it harder to collect data and facts and develop strategies to reduce g…