President Obama unloaded on America’s gun-control loopholes following the San Bernardino shooting that left at least 14 dead — urging the country to help make mass shootings “rare instead of normal.”
“The one thing we do know is that we have a pattern now of mass shootings in this country that has no parallel anywhere else in the world,” Obama said during a scheduled interview with CBS on Wednesday afternoon as the California rampage unfolded.
“And there’s nothing that we can do to stop them,” he said. “That’s a law that needs to be changed.”
But he said there are ways to prevent some of these types of attacks by strengthening background checks and implementing “common sense gun-safety laws.”
“What we do know [is] that there are steps we can take to make Americans safer and that we should come together in a bipartisan basis at every level of government to make these [shootings] rare as opposed to normal,” he added.
This was 15th time Obama has addressed a mass shooting in the United States as president, the last time being after last week’s Planned Parenthood attack in Colorado Springs, which left three dead.
Meanwhile, presidential hopefuls tweeted their prayers to the victims and the families of Wednesday’s massacre.
“California shooting looks very bad,” Donald Trump wrote. “Good luck to law enforcement and God bless. This is when our police are so appreciated!”
Hillary Clinton echoed Obama’s sentiments, tweeting, “I refuse to accept this as normal. We must take action to stop gun violence now.”