Updated at 8am
US PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA will continue pressing for stricter gun laws following yesterday’s mass shooting at a community college in Oregon, the White House has said.
In a press conference last night, a visibly angry Obama urged voters to hold politicians accountable for the failure to pass gun control laws.
As I said just a few months ago, and I said a few months before that, and I said each time we see one of these mass shootings – our thoughts and prayers are not enough.
It’s not enough. It does not capture the heartache and anger and grief that we should feel.
And it does nothing to prevent this carnage from being inflicted some place else in America, next week, or a couple of months from now.
At least 9 people were killed in the attack at Umpqua Community College, in the town of Roseburg, yesterday.
The shooter, a 20-year-old man, was killed in a gunfight with police.
Obama added, damningly:
We don’t know why this individual did what he did. And it’s fair to say that anybody who does this has a sickness in their minds, regardless of what they think their motivations may be…
But we are not the only country on earth that has people with mental illnesses or who want to do harm to other people.
We are the only advanced country on earth that sees these kinds of mass shootings every few months.
Somehow, this has become routine. The reporting is routine, my response here at this podium ends up being routine. The conversation in the aftermath of it – we’ve become numb to this.
We, collectively, are answerable to those families who lose their loved ones, because of our inaction.
Obama was briefed on the situation throughout the day, a White House official told The Hill.
“The issue of sensible steps that can be taken to protect our communities from gun violence continues to be a top priority of this administration,” press secretary Josh Earnest said, though he added that the president is “realistic” about the unlikelihood of congressional action on the issue.
The attack is the 294th mass shooting in the US this year, according to the crowd-sourced database Mass Shooting Tracker.
Last year, Obama described his inability to pass tougher gun laws as the “biggest frustration” of his presidency.
“I’ve had to make statements like this too many times,” he said in June after a church shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, that killed nine people.
Once again, innocent people were killed in part because someone who wanted to inflict harm had no trouble getting their hands on a gun.
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