Obama on Gun Violence: Six Years of Statements But Change Remains Elusive

Barack Obama teared up when he spoke of the 2012 shooting
at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut.

THE GUARDIAN: The mass shootings in South Carolina are the latest in a long line national tragedies as legislative efforts toward gun law reform continue to fail

More than a dozen times in his presidency, Barack Obama has appeared before television cameras and issued statements to express sorrow at a mass shooting event in America.

After Arizona, where congresswoman Gabby Giffords was shot in the head, he spoke of hope. After Newtown, where 20 children and six teachers were shot dead in their classrooms, he spoke of a nation’s broken heart. On Thursday, after nine people were shot dead in a church in Charleston, he spoke of despair.

There are other shootings where Obama has remained silent, or not engaged with issue of guns or the cause of an event. But when he has, the president’s responses have varied from anger to exasperation to sadness, nearly every time vowing that such events must not happen again.

During his presidency, most legislative efforts to reform America’s gun laws through universal background checks or restrictions on sales and magazines have failed. » | Erin McCann in New York | Thursday,, June 18, 2015