President Obama vowed to keep talking about gun violence while in the White House, but said people calling for changes to gun laws must elect lawmakers willing to vote for them. Photo: AP

AMERICA: it’s the land of the free, the brave and a place where the power of a freedom-loving firearm lobby outranks the horror of senseless gun deaths.

The gun problem that so squarely belongs to the United States looks like it is there to stay.

For all the talking, the debating and the gut-churning gun-death-per-capita statistics, one of the world’s greatest nations is paralysed by the most deadly of problems.

LATEST MASS SHOOTING: Umpqua Community College, Oregon

MASS SHOOTINGS IN THE US IN 2015

Boasting a massive financial war chest, a vocal and passionate support base and the backing of the political right, the gun lobby is a force to be reckoned with.

“They’ve been at this a long time, they’ve perfected what they do,” President Obama said this week in an impassioned plea for change.

“You’ve got to give them credit — they’re very effective.

“They don’t represent the majority of the American people but they know how to stir up fear — they know how to stir up their base — they know to raise money — they know how to scare politicians — they know how to organise campaigns.”

The basic logic of the gun lobby was summed up in the aftermath of the Newtown shooting in 2012 when 20 children and six adults were shot dead at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

At that time, National Rifle Association chief Wayne LaPierre declared “the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun”.

The sentiments declared by LaPierre after Sandy Hook were echoed this week by Republican front runner Donald Trump when he said that perhaps if a teacher at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Orgeon, had been armed the death toll wouldn’t have been so bad.

This deep-seated fear of losing access to firearms is enshrined in the constitution.

The second amendment guarantees Americans the right to own a gun — and has been upheld by the US Supreme court on more than one occasion.

It’s for this reason that gun control crusaders only have modest aims.

None of the gun control advocates are talking about a mandatory gun buyback like Australia saw in the 1990s.

No one is talking about banning weapons.

Even President Obama — known now for persistent urging of America to change — once reached out to the gun lobby in a bid to placate their fears before the 2008 election.

“I want to be absolutely clear … when ya’ll go home and you’re talking to your buddies and they say ‘he wants to take my gun away’, you’ve heard it here: I believe in the Second Amendment,” he told a rally just a month before the poll.

“I believe in people’s lawful right to bear arms. I will not take your shotgun away. I will not take your rifle away. I won’t take your handgun away.”

He tempered the call by adding: “So, there are some commonsense gun safety laws that I believe in. But I’m not going to take your guns away.”

From an Australian perspective, gun control crusaders have fundamentally low-level goals — mandating background checks, making the checks more thorough and closing loopholes that allow people to buy a gun at a fair without a check.

But Obama couldn’t even get these types of changes through congress in the aftermath of Sandy Hook.

This week, gun control advocates were buoyed by Hillary Clinton who pledged to fight for “new, effective gun control measures” as president.

“What is wrong with us that we can’t stand up to the NRA and the gun lobby and the gun manufacturers? This is not just tragic. We don’t just need to pray for people, we need to act. We need to build a movement,” she said on Monday.

Her proposals included universal background checks, holding negligent dealers accountable and using her executive power to close loopholes if she can’t get congress to act.

Traditionally Democrats and Republicans have both sidestepped the gun issue leading up to elections.

Clinton’s interest could be partly tactical — her main democratic rival Bernie Sanders hails from pro-gun Vermont.

But even if Clinton isn’t talking about a ban or a buyback, staking a claim on guns as an election issue is significant.

After Clinton staked her claim on the issue, her key opponent Sanders also called for tighter background checks and a ban on assault rifles.

But the reality is that because of the way Congress usually falls, such measures — as Obama found in 2012 — are unlikely to pass legislative approval.

Clinton however hinted this week that she’d use executive level power to push some changes through without Congress.

As of October 1, America had racked up 294 mass shootings — defined as incidents where four or more people are killed or wounded — in just 274 days of the year.

More than 380 people died in those incidents, with over 1000 injured.

These statistics include the high profile incidents like the Charleston shooting, the Lafayette theatre shooting, the Viriginia live TV slayings and last week’s Umpqua Community College massacre in Roseburg, Oregon.

But the vast number also includes hundreds of deaths never heard of.

Suburban shoot outs that are so common they don’t make interstate, let alone international press.

The figure also doesn’t include the staggering solo deaths by gun suicide, or solo homicides.

It’s a problem that’s going nowhere.

And even if Hillary Clinton gets into office with her plan, she’ll face the might of a lobby that’s yet to be defeated.