School shooting my worst day as President - Obama
US: US President Barack Obama said in an interview broadcast
Sunday that the massacre at a Connecticut elementary school which killed
20 young children was "the worst day of my presidency." Obama also
expressed skepticism about a proposal by the gun lobby group The
National Rifle Association to introduce armed guards in every US school
and admitted there would be resistance to new proposals to control
firearms.
"The question ... becomes whether we are actually shook up enough by
what happened here that it does not just become another one of these
routine episodes where it gets a lot of attention for a couple of weeks
and then it drifts away," Obama said.
"It certainly won't feel like that to me," Obama said in an interview
with NBC's "Meet the Press." "This is something that was the worst day
of my presidency. And it's not something that I want to see repeated."
Obama has promised to unveil broad-based proposals to rein in gun
violence in the United States in the New Year, but has also said he
believes there is a right in the US Constitution for individuals to bear
arms.
He has committed to putting a halt to gun violence at the top of his
agenda for his second term, though his remarks Sunday did not appear to
signal an all-out effort to shape public opinion on the issue.
On December 14, a disturbed man, 20-year-old Adam Lanza, killed his
mother in their Newtown, Connecticut home before embarking on a horrific
shooting spree at a local elementary school.
He blasted his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School and shot dead 20
six- and seven-year old children and six adults with a military-style
assault rifle before taking his own life with a handgun as police closed
in. The bloodshed, the latest in a string of mass shootings in the
United States, reopened a national debate on the country's gun laws,
which are far more lax than in most other developed nations.
AFP
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