SOMERSWORTH — Democratic presidential hopeful Martin O’Malley told a crowd in Somersworth he will take on the NRA.

Speaking to about 50 people at a gathering of the Somersworth Democratic Committee, O’Malley said the country has become passive in the wake of so many mass shootings.

“One day it is Planned Parenthood, another day it is a church basement, then a school shooting,” O’Malley said. “Can you imagine what we would be doing as a nation if it was ISOL (ISIS) carrying out these attacks, rather than our own people?”

O’Malley said he doesn’t know what it will take to shake the country out of its lethargy.

“We’ve become passive as if we are going to have to deal with this particular congress and the NRA’s clout forever,” O’Malley said. “I don’t think the NRA is as strong as the rest of us. So I intend to take them on.”

O’Malley listed four key reforms; repealing immunity for gun manufacturers, requiring universal background checks, a ban on assault weapons, and making it easier to trace weapons by making serial numbers that cannot be erased and micro-stamping rounds of ammunition.

In response to a question about the racial unrest, O’Malley said that in "places where young black men are shot to death on a regular basis," like Baltimore, Philadelphia and Chicago, the problem is tied to the high rate of unemployment.

“Riots are a manifestation of a democracy that is failing,” O’Malley said.

He called for greater transparency and a national standard for lethal force. Federal law requires all police departments to enter crime statistics into a national database; O’Malley said it should also require reporting of police brutality complaints.

“When I was mayor, I published those statistics,” O’Malley said. “We worked actively to recruit a police force that matched the diversity of the population.”

On international issues, O’Malley said events in Paris, Beirut and the downing of Russian airliner represent a new era or warfare and conflict. The threat of ISIS is like a three-level chess board with battles in Iraq, Syria and the larger global threat.

“We are not going to solve this problem by keeping one foot trapped in the Cold War,” O’Malley said. “This is the challenge of our times we should use this opportunity to work together to defeat ISOL (ISIS) and make our cities and our country safer.”

O’Malley said to be safe the country needs a level of cooperation and information sharing between local, state and federal authorities that they have only just begun to embrace.

The second great challenge, according to O’Malley, is climate change; and it is also the greatest business opportunity to come to the U.S. in a century, he said.

“I am the first candidate, and hopefully not the last, to put forward a plan to move us to a 100 percent clean electric energy grid by 2050,” O’Malley said. “We can create 5 million jobs along the way.”

O’Malley said the government must stop subsidizing fossil fuels, start investing in next generation technology, and extend tax credits for renewable energy.

O’Malley said under President Barack Obama, the good news was that the country experienced 68 consecutive months of positive job growth, but the bad news was the direction of wages.

“Nearly 70 percent of workers are earning the same or less than they did 12 years ago,” O’Malley said. “Great nations don’t build wealth by locking cash in the closet.”

He said investment is needed in infrastructure, research and development and education.

O’Malley said the country needs to make college debt-free. He said he graduated in 1985 and paid off all of his student loans in two years. His daughters graduated from college with a mountain of bills.

“We have chosen to be the only developed nation on the planet that saddles our kids with a lifetime of debt,” O’Malley said. “We can also choose not to do that.”