NEWTOWN: President Barack Obama vowed Sunday to battle gun violence, casting the fight as a nation’s duty to protect its young, as a Connecticut town prepared to bury the first two victims of last week’s rampage at an elementary school.
Speaking at a vigil for the dead, Obama pledged to use all his power to stop such gun massacres, saying “these tragedies must end.”
Newtown, home to the Sandy Hook Elementary School where Adam Lanza, 20, unleashed terror with a military-style assault rifle Friday, will hold the first two funerals on Monday, with more scheduled throughout the week, according to local website Newtown Patch.
Obama, called for the fourth time in his presidency to eulogize the dead of a mass gun crime, appeared to commit himself to a genuine effort to reform firearms laws, perhaps by leading a push to restore a ban on assault weapons like the one used by Lanza, which expired in 2004.
He did not cast the fight against the entrenched gun lobby, which wields substantial power in Congress, as an effort to confiscate weapons. But he suggested that the argument should be built more on the need to protect, innocent, defenseless children.
“Can we say that we’re truly doing enough to give all the children of this country the chance they deserve to live out their lives in happiness and with purpose?” he implored, as candles burned by his podium to remember the victims.
“I’ve been reflecting on this the last few days, and if we’re honest with ourselves, the answer is no. We are not doing enough, and we will have to change.”
Obama’s impassioned remarks did not propose specific solutions, in keeping with the somber tone of the apolitical vigil service.
Heartrending sobs broke the silence as Obama slowly read the names of the children whose lives were taken and the adults who died trying to protect them.
“They lost their lives in a school that could have been any school, in a quiet town full of good and decent people that could be any town in America,” Obama said.
“We can’t tolerate this anymore. These tragedies must end, and to end them we must change,” the newly re-elected president added, implicitly rebuking those who argue that efforts to introduce more gun control laws would do little to stop killings.
Many states, including Connecticut, already have strict laws on the purchase of firearms, but with no federal statutes, there is little to stop the traffic of guns from other states where fewer restrictions apply.
Several Democratic lawmakers, and Independent Sen. Joe Lieberman, said Sunday that it was time to take a deeper look into the recent spate of mass shootings and what can be done about it.
“I think we could be at a tipping point ... a tipping point where we might actually get something done,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
Schumer and other Democrats, as well as Lieberman, said they want to ban the sale of new assault weapons and make it harder for mentally ill individuals to obtain weapons. Lieberman said a new commission should be created to look at gun laws and the mental health system, as well as violence in movies and video games. “Assault weapons were developed for the US military, not commercial gun manufacturers,” Lieberman said before the Newtown vigil Sunday night.
“This is a moment to start a very serious national conversation about violence in our society, particularly about these acts of mass violence,” said the Connecticut senator, who is retiring next year.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein said she will introduce legislation next year to ban new assault weapons, as well as big clips, drums and strips of more than 10 bullets.
“It can be done,” Feinstein told NBC’s “Meet the Press” of reinstating the ban despite deep opposition by the National Rifle Association and similar groups.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Obama could use executive powers to enforce existing gun laws, as well as throw his weight behind legislation like Feinstein’s.
“It’s time for the president, I think, to stand up and lead and tell this country what we should do — not go to Congress and say, ‘What do you guys want to do?’” Bloomberg told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
A federal ban on assault weapons expired in 2004, and efforts to revive it have failed. Obama, who has on several occasions proven better at framing problems in powerful rhetoric than in mustering the political coalition to enact change, supported restoring the law while running for president in 2008 but has not made it a priority since.
The gun lobby, led by the National Rifle Association (NRA), is well funded and a powerful player in Washington. It argues that crazy people do crazy things and that clamping down on fundamental American liberties will achieve nothing.
Others point out that Anders Behring Breivik, for example, managed to kill 77 people in Norway, a country with far tighter gun laws than the United States.
Another commonly heard conservative argument is that guns are inevitable, so the only way to really protect people is to have more weapons in the hands of trained professionals, securing places like schools and shopping malls.
Gun control advocates recoil from such logic and say that regardless it must make sense to ban assault weapons and large capacity magazines.
But with gun ownership protected by the constitution and firearms popular among a broad base of Americans, especially conservative Republicans, gun bans have long been seen as a vote-losing proposition.
At Sunday’s vigil, the voices of Jewish, Christian and Muslim faith leaders united in grief as mourners grasped for meaning amid unbearable loss.
Two days after the shooting, nerves remained on edge in Newtown.
Newtown was the second deadliest school shooting in US history after the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007, in which South Korean student Seung-Hui Cho shot and killed 32 people and wounded 17 others before taking his own life.
In the most notorious recent incident, a 24-year-old, James Holmes, allegedly killed 12 people and wounded 58 others when he opened fire at a midnight screening of the latest Batman movie in Aurora, Colorado, in July.
Obama poised to tackle gun reform after latest massacre
