US President Barack Obama called Sunday for action to tighten gun laws as he remembered the victims of a mass shooting at Washington’s Navy Yard last week.
Such killings ought to shock Americans and lead them to demand change, but had sadly become the “new normal” in the US, he said.
“Sometimes I fear there’s a creeping resignation that these tragedies are just somehow the way it is. That these tragedies are the new normal. We can’t accept this,” Obama told the memorial service for 12 civilian workers killed by a gunman Monday at the base.
“We can’t accept this. As Americans bound in grief and love, we must insist here today there is nothing normal about innocent men and women being gunned down where they work,” he said. “There is nothing normal about our children being gunned down in their classrooms.
There is nothing normal about children dying in our streets from stray bullets.” He praised the victims for their service to the Government and said they were ordinary citizens going about their daily lives.
Obama noted it was the fifth time during his presidency that such a mass shooting has occurred and said the reason the US has more such tragedies than other developed countries is the easy access to guns.
If even one tragedy can be prevented, Obama said the nation should try to do so.
After a shooting at a Connecticut elementary school in December that left 20 children and six educators dead, Obama had pushed for tougher gun laws, but the measures failed in Congress.
He acknowledged that failure and said change would not come from lawmakers, but instead Americans must push for change.
“I do not accept that we cannot find a common-sense way to preserve our traditions, including our basic Second Amendment freedoms and the rights of law-abiding gun owners, while at the same time reducing the gun violence that unleashes so much mayhem on a regular basis,” Obama said, referring to the ammendment to the US Constitution that protects the right to bear arms.
Aaron Alexis, a former sailor and contract worker with mental health issues, allegedly opened fire in a building on the base early Monday, killing 12 workers.
The Pentagon has said it will review security procedures at all US military installations worldwide.