President Barack Obama blamed public apathy combined
with the tight "grip" on Congress of the National Rifle Association,
the powerful U.S. gun lobby, for blocking stricter gun laws.
Speaking during an interview recorded on Friday, just
two days after the mass shooting at a black church in South Carolina, Obama
said he did not foresee any quick changes to gun laws.
"Unfortunately, the grip of the NRA on Congress
is extremely strong," Obama said in a clip of the interview with "WTF
with Marc Maron" posted by the New York Times.
It was not the first time Obama has railed against the
NRA. After the Newtown, Connecticut school massacre in 2012, a tragedy that
Obama has called his toughest time in office, he pushed for changes to gun
laws.
He proposed more background checks for gun sales and
pushed to ban more types of military-style assault weapons and limit the
capacity of ammunition magazines.
But he failed to convince enough lawmakers to support
the restrictions.
"I don't foresee any legislative action being taken
in this Congress. And I don't foresee any real action being taken until the
American public feels a sufficient sense of urgency and they say to themselves,
'This is not normal, this is something that we can change, and we're going to
change it,'" he said in the interview with Maron.
The interview marks the fifth time in two days that
Obama spoke publicly about his frustrations with gun laws. He addressed the
issue in Washington before traveling to California, where he brought it up at
the U.S. Conference of Mayors, and at two fundraisers for the Democratic Party.
Obama, who is spending the weekend golfing in the Palm
Springs area with friends, took to Twitter on Saturday to vent.
"Here are the stats: per population, we kill each
other with guns at a rate 297x more than Japan, 49x more than France, 33x more
than Israel," Obama said on Twitter.
The
U.S. constitution protects the right to own guns. Obama acknowledged in the
interview that guns are an important part of many Americans' heritage.
"The question is just: is there a way of accommodating
that legitimate set of traditions with some common-sense stuff that prevents a
21-year-old who is angry about something or confused about something or is
racist or is deranged from going into a gun store," Obama said in the
interview.
"That is not something that we have ever fully
come to terms with," he said.
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