Ill give you my gun when

you pry it from my cold, dead hands was a saying popularised by the hugely influential National Rifle Association. The NRA lobbies for the Second Amendments right to bear arms. In December 2012, the saying again became a grim reality after Adam Lanza shot dead 20 children, six staff, and then himself, at the suburban Sandy Hook Elementary School. The atrocity joined a long list of school spree killings.When Obama called for gun reform the NRA responded with a call to arm teachers. Then in January 2013, Hadiya Pendleton, a 15 year old girl was shot dead near Obamas home. The week before shed performed at his second inauguration. Her killing highlighted the huge urban death toll from guns even in a state with some of Americas strictest gun laws. His reforms called for a ban on assault weapons and universal background checks on gun license applications.

Obama is the first President in well over a century to come from an urban background and to see gun reform through the prism of the city, rather than the countryside. But the hugely popular gun lobby argues that America protected its first families, established its independence and helped free the Western world from Nazism and totalitarian Communism, all at the point of a gun.Obama took on healthcare reform in his first term in one of the worlds worst recessions and gun control in his second when Republicans had rarely felt so defensive. Few believed he could achieve his goals.But it wouldnt be the first time that Americas first African American President achieves the seemingly impossible.