Obama comforts town, hints at new gun laws
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US President Barack Obama, in offering condolences at a vigil Sunday night for the 26 victims of an elementary school shooting, said a society's first responsibility is to protect its children from harm.
He said in Newtown, Connecticut, the site of Friday's shooting that he would use all his power to prevent such tragedies in the future, and while not saying specifically that he would seek stronger gun laws, he hinted strongly at it.
"Can we honestly say as a nation that we are meeting our obligation?" Obama asked. "The answer is no. We're not doing enough." Noting that this was the fourth time in his presidency that he has comforted a grieving community after a mass shooting, Obama said, "We can't tolerate this anymore. These tragedies must end." While acknowledging that "no single law or set of laws can eliminate evil," Obama suggested that he may nevertheless attempt to pursue them.
"Surely, we can do better than this," he said, two days after 206- and 7-year-olds were gunned down.
"We have an obligation to try," the president said. "Are we really prepared to say we are powerless? That the politics is too hard?" Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman, who attended the vigil, told pool reporters he would support a commission to look into violence, including gun laws.
"These events are happening more frequently, and I worry that if we don't take a thoughtful look at them, we're going to lose the hurt and the anger that we have now," Lieberman said.
The senator said e also supported restoring the law banning assault weapons, which expired in 2004 after a decade on the books.
The issue of gun control was front and centre on Sunday news shows in the United States.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a gun control advocate, called upon Obama to take action to curb the availability of assault weapons in the United States.
"It's time for the president to stand up and lead," Bloomberg said on the NBC network's news programme Meet the Press.
"It's so unbelievable," Bloomberg said, referring to the Newtown shooting, "and it only happens in America, and it happens again and again." Obama arrived in Connecticut Sunday afternoon. Before the vigil held at Newtown High School, the president spoke with the parents of some of the children killed in the attack as well as emergency responders, the White House said.
"We can't accept events like this as routine," he said at the vigil.
He ended his remarks by naming each of the six teachers and 20children killed.
Friday's spree had a 27th victim, Nancy Lanza, the mother of the alleged gunman, Adam Lanza, 20, who apparently killed himself in the school. Police investigations showed Nancy Lanza was Friday's first victim and was killed at their home.
The shootings continued to draw global outrage and sympathy.
"I assure the families of the victims, especially those who lost a child, of my closeness in prayer," Pope Benedict XVI said in Rome. "May the god of consolation touch their hearts and ease their pain." Sympathy also came from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who expressed "sincere condolences and said it was time for the US to revise its policies "based on materialistic profits" and instead work towards a world where people would "live beside each other on the basis of love, kindness and friendship," the ISNA news agency quoted the president as saying.
Meanwhile, American media reported that Nancy Lanza had been a gun aficionado who had taken her children to target practice.
