Obama: Grip of NRA on Congress extremly strong
US President Barack Obama says public opinion must shift before the country acts to tighten access to guns, lamenting the grip of the National Rifle Association (NRA) on Congress.
Speaking at the annual US Conference of Mayors in San Francisco on Friday, Obama rejected the idea of mass shootings having become the new normal.
He said that if Congress had reformed the nation’s gun laws “we might have some more Americans still here with us.”
“You all might have to attend fewer funerals,” he added. “Some families might still be whole.”
Obama made the remarks two days after a white man shot dead nine African Americans at a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina.
The US president asserted that he would not abandon his quest for gun control laws.
“I am not resigned,” Obama said. “I refuse to pretend this is the new normal. I have faith we will eventually do the right thing.”
He went on to say that “ultimately Congress will follow the people.”
In an interview on Friday evening, Obama said the grip of the NRA on Congress is very strong.
“I don’t foresee any legislative action being taken by this Congress,” he said referring to the Republican-dominated legislative body.
Following the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting, Obama pushed for gun reform, including expanded background checks and a ban on high-capacity magazines, but the powerful gun rights lobby and its people in Congress fiercely opposed the measure.
On December 14, 2012, twenty children and six adults were fatally shot by a gunman -- who later killed himself -- at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in the town of Newtown in the US state of Connecticut.
Every year, more than 30,000 people are shot and killed in the United States.
The US averages 87 gun deaths each day as a function of gun violence, with an average of 183 injured, according to the University of Chicago Crime Lab and the Centers for Disease Control.
About 4.5 million firearms are sold annually in the United States at a cost of 2 to 3 billion dollars.
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