But shouldn't there have also been chairs left empty to memorialize other casualties – including those "who no longer have a voice" thanks to Obama administration policies?

While trumpeting the private death toll from guns, Obama ignored the986 people killed by police in the United States last year according to The Washington Post's database. Many police departments are aggressive — if not reckless — in part because the Justice Department always provides cover for them at the Supreme Court. Obama's "Justice Department has supported police officers every time an excessive-force case has made its way" to a Supreme Court hearing, The New York Times noted last year. Attorney General Loretta Lynch recently said that federally-funded police agencies should not even be required to report the number of civilians they kill.

To add a Euro flair to the evening, Obama could drape tri-color flags on a few empty seats to commemorate the 42 medical staff, patients, and others slain at a last Oct. 3 when an American  AC-130 gunship blasted a French Médecins Sans Frontières‎ hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan. The US military revised its story several times but admitted in November that the carnage was the result of "avoidable … human error." Regrettably, that bureaucratic phrase lacks the power to resurrect victims.

No plans were announced to designate a seat for Brian Terry, the US Border Patrol agent killed in 2010. Guns found at the scene of Terry's killing were linked to the Fast and Furious gunwalking operation masterminded by the Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) agency. At least 150 Mexicans were also killed by guns illegally sent south of the border with ATF approval. The House of Representatives voted to hold then-attorney general Eric Holder in contempt for refusing to disclose Fast and Furious details, but Obama did not dwell on this topic in his State of the Union address.

On a more festive note, Obama could have saved seats for a wedding party. Twelve Yemenis who were celebrating nuptials on Dec. 12, 2013, would not have been able to attend Obama's speech because they were blown to bits by a US drone strike. The Yemeni government — which is heavily bankrolled by the US government —paid more than a million dollars compensation to the survivors of innocent civilians killed and wounded in the attack.

Four seats could have been left vacant for the Americans killed in the 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya — US Ambassador Christopher Stevens, Foreign Service Officer Sean Smith, and CIA contractors Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty. But any such recognition would rankle the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton, who has worked tirelessly to sweep those corpses under the rug. It would also be appropriate to include a hat tip to the hundreds, likely thousands, of Libyans who have been killed in the civil war unleashed after the Obama administration bombed Libya to topple its ruler, Moammar Gadhafi.