The White House partnered with CNN to hold a town hall meeting regarding gun control. The NRA was invited to attend and they declined. President Obama, as well as the audience members, made fair, accurate observations. It would be impossible for me to run through all of the points they touched on and still expect you to finish reading this article, but there are five takeaways that are particularly poignant. You can watch the town hall meeting in full here.

What exactly is the executive order regarding gun control?

• If you sell firearms (anywhere), you need to have a license and run a background check on customers.
• If you buy “some of the most dangerous weapons”* you need a background check
• Continue to encourage states to provide information for background checks
• Make background checks efficient and effective
• Dealers who ship firearms must notify law enforcement if firearms are lost in transit
• Renew domestic violence outreach efforts
• Increase access to mental health care
• Mental health information should be disclosed in background checks
• States can report relevant information for background checks
• People with a history of mental health issues will be prohibited from buying a gun
• Departments of Defense, Justice, and Homeland Security are to conduct research into gun safety technology.

* machine guns, sawed-off shotguns, etc

You can find the detailed version here.

Mr. Cooper: The vast majority of criminals get their guns from -- either illegally or from family or friends. So background checks is not something that's going to affect them, is it?

The President: What I've said consistently throughout my presidency is I respect the Second Amendment; I respect the right to bear arms; I respect people who want a gun for self-protection, for hunting, for sportsmanship. But all of us can agree that it makes sense to do everything we can to keep guns out of the hands of people who would try to do others harm, or to do themselves harm.

The point of his executive order is to prevent people who should not hold firearms from gaining access to firearms. No one is under the illusion that this will prevent every incident of gun violence. The point is to try. The nation’s problem with gun violence is too great to be resolved in one presidency. It will take time. Of course, if a person is bent on destruction and wants a firearm, there are plenty of ways to get one. It still should not stop the government and the proper agencies from working to prevent that access.

The President: Every year we're losing 30,000 people to gun violence. Two-thirds of those are actually suicides. Hundreds of kids under the age of 18 are being shot or shooting themselves, often by accident -- many of them under the age of five. And so if we can combine gun safety with sensible background checks and some other steps, we're not going to eliminate gun violence, but we will lessen it. And if we take that number from 30,000 down to, let's say, 28,000, that's 2,000 families who don't have to go through what the families at Newtown or San Bernardino or Charleston went through.

Mental health in some circles is still a taboo topic. Many people still have doubts about the reality of mental illness. The reason some people deny that mental health is a true concern is because it has no physical repercussions. If someone broke their arm, you can clearly see that their arm is broken. If someone is going through a mental breakdown, oftentimes there may be no physical manifestations until that person does something drastic (like suicide). Since there is a stigma around mental health, many people do not ask for help until it is too late. The fact that most gun incidents end in suicides proves this to be true.

The President: Let's go back to the city of Chicago that has strong gun control laws. And oftentimes the NRA will point to that as an example and say, see, these things don't work. Well, the problem is, is that about 30, 40 percent of those guns are coming from Indiana, across the border, where there are much laxer laws. And so folks will go to a gun show and purchase a whole bunch of firearms, put them in a van, drive up into Mike Pfleger's neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago, where his parish is, open up the trunk, and those things are for sale.

Some people forget that gun violence varies from state to state. There are some cities that never have to deal with gun violence. There are countless citizens who hold firearms and have probably never had to shoot it. On the other hand, there are other communities that are plagued by gun violence and need an intervening force to curb the violence. This executive order is designed to address that issue. There are holes in our system that allow for Chicago-Indiana scenarios to unravel throughout the nation. This is an attempt to close them.

The President: There's nothing else in our lives that we purchase where we don't try to make it a little safer if we can. Traffic fatalities have gone down drastically during my lifetime. And part of it is technology, and part of it is the National Highway Safety Administration does research and they figure out, you know what, seatbelts really work…Now, the notion that we would not apply the same basic principles to gun ownership as we do to everything else that we own just to try to make them safer…contradicts what we do to try to create a better life for Americans in every other area of our lives.

There are many consumer products with warning labels and recommendations of use. For toys there are recommended ages and potential hazards that are placed on the packages. Before you purchase cigars, there are warning labels of the adverse affects of tobacco. Even alcohol has a warning label for pregnant women. Restaurants that serve raw meat warn about the adverse affects of eating raw fish of your stomach is not prepared for it. Society has created many different ways to warn people of the adverse affects of common products and it has made us safer. It only makes sense to do the same thing with firearms.

The President: …violent crime has been steadily declining across America for a pretty long time. And you wouldn't always know it by watching television, but overall, most cities are much safer than they were 10 years ago or 20 years ago.

It feels like every time you turn on the news, there is another mass shooting. Stories of tragic events are laced through our news media. Sometimes the major headlines will spend some time on happier, more uplifting stores but, regardless, tragedies get more air time. This is not an attempt to undermine those tragic events, because they are heartbreaking. At the same time, it surprises most people to hear that overall crime has been decreasing. Granted, some areas have seen a rise in crime and others not so much, but the general trend is encouraging.