As president, Barack Obama desperately wanted gun control. He didn’t run on it because he knew he didn’t have the votes for it, but everyone knew what he really wanted to see. Hell, he even admitted why he wasn’t running on gun control but that he’d love to pass it anyway. This was a man no reasonable gun owner trusted.

Then Sandy Hook happened, and the world was devastated. Contrary to what a lot of people think, that included gun owners.

But rather than mourn and move on, Obama felt it was time to Do Something. Nevermind that the killer murdered his own mother to steal her gun or anything. Nope, he wanted to pass gun control.

Luckily, he couldn’t make it happen. It turns out, he’s still a little salty about it.

Former President Barack Obama described the Sandy Hook shooting as the “saddest day” of his presidency but, he said, “when Congress failed to do anything in the aftermath,” it also became “the angriest” he ever was.

“I was disgusted and appalled by the inaction. You had parents who just lost their children sitting in front of senators and asking them for very modest reasonable approaches. This wasn’t some radical agenda,” Obama told Oprah Winfrey in a hour-plus episode of The Oprah Conversation that debuted on Apple TV+ on Tuesday. “It was all viewed as politics as opposed to this human moment we should’ve been able to respond to as a society.”

And he uses the title of his book to address whether the United States is close to a solution on the issue of gun violence.

When Winfrey asked him, after Obama had touched on the “anguish” of Sandy Hook, if he thought if people saw the victims of mass shootings and the “carnage” if that would change how Americans feel about gun violence, Obama said, “Gun violence is one of those issues where we are far away from the promised land on because it’s become such a cultural hot-button issue.”

“It’s become wrapped up with people’s sense of identity and the degree to which the country’s divided and some of this is a big rural, urban split,” he added, referencing hunting and how in particularly remote communities one might want some sort of protection, living 15-20 minutes away from the local police station. “It’s gotten very polarized. I think unwinding the polarization around that issue is going to take some time.”

Of course, he’s ignoring the role he played in that polarization. After all, this is a man who responded to criticism of not working with Republicans by saying “I won” and pushed the whole “elections have consequences” narrative to the point that it was clear he wasn’t willing to work with his opposition. It was his way or the highway.

That’s especially true on guns.

So no, no one tripped over themselves to pass gun control legislation that likely wouldn’t have done a damn thing to prevent the shooting in the first place.

Obama is upset that we didn’t just roll over and play dead. For him, that is the promised land on guns and so-called gun violence. I’ve got news for him, though. That’s never gonna happen.