Why One Seat in the First Lady’s Guest Box at the State of the Union Will Be Empty

A White House of­fi­cial Fri­day said that for the ad­dress—Obama’s sev­enth and fi­nal op­por­tun­ity to pro­claim that the “state of our uni­on is strong”—the pres­id­ent will leave one seat in first lady Michelle Obama’s guest box empty to hon­or the gun-vi­ol­ence vic­tims “who no longer have a voice.”

“They need the rest of us to speak for them,” the of­fi­cial said. “To tell their stor­ies. To hon­or their memory. To sup­port the Amer­ic­ans whose lives have been forever changed by the ter­rible ripple ef­fect of gun vi­ol­ence—sur­viv­ors who’ve had to learn to live with a dis­ab­il­ity, or without the love of their life. To re­mind every single one of our rep­res­ent­at­ives that it’s their re­spons­ib­il­ity to do something about this.”

Obama has been on a pub­lic cru­sade for gun con­trol since the start of the year. In an emo­tion­al speech Tues­day, he an­nounced a pack­age of ex­ec­ut­ive ac­tions to curb gun vi­ol­ence, in­clud­ing nar­row­ing the gun-show loop­hole. Re­call­ing the 20 chil­dren gunned down at 2012 ele­ment­ary-school shoot­ing in New­town, Con­necti­c­ut, he teared up: “Every time I think about those kids, it gets me mad.”

He de­fen­ded those ac­tions in a town hall on guns Thursday night, field­ing ques­tions from NRA sup­port­ers and gun-con­trol act­iv­ists alike. And in an op-ed inThe New York Times, he de­clared that this cycle, he would be a single-is­sue voter, pledging that he wouldn’t  “cam­paign for, vote for, or sup­port any can­did­ate, even in my own party, who does not sup­port com­mon-sense gun re­form.”

White House aides prom­ise that un­like after New­town, when Obama urged Con­gress to pass gun-con­trol le­gis­la­tion that ul­ti­mately failed, Tues­day’s ad­dress won’t be a policy wish list. In­stead, the pres­id­ent will take a “big-pic­ture ap­proach to some of the chal­lenges and op­por­tun­it­ies that we face as a coun­try,” a seni­or White House Of­fi­cial said last month.