Obama calls for ‘transformation’ of nation’s gun laws

President Obama said Sunday that last week’s deadly shooting at the Washington Navy Yard “echoes other recent tragedies” that has devastated families across the nation.

President Obama called Sunday for a “transformation” of the nation’s gun laws, saying last week’s deadly shooting at the Washington Navy Yard echoes too many other killings across the United States.

“Our tears are not enough,” Obama said during a memorial service for the victims and their families. “Our words and our prayers are not enough … We are going to have to change.”

Gun violence in America “ought to obsess us,” Obama said.

Acknowledging that a gun control package he proposed earlier this year has stalled in Congress, Obama said the change won’t come from Washington, but has to come from the American people themselves.

During a 21-minute eulogy delivered at the Marine Barracks Washington, Obama also warned that Americans must fight “a creeping resignation” about mass shootings, the notion “that this is somehow the new normal.”

But “there is nothing normal about innocent men and women gunned down where they work,” Obama said. “There is nothing normal about our children being gunned down in their classrooms.”

In a sometimes emotional address, the president said he has now spoken at “five American communities ripped apart by mass violence,” and added: “Once more, our hearts are broken; once more, we ask why.”

Obama, who has proposed changes to the nation’s gun and mental illness laws, noted that shootings in other countries such as Australia and the United Kingdom led to changes in their gun laws. “What’s different in America,” he said, “is it’s easy to get your hands on a gun — and a lot of us know this.”

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