America is willing to take on terrorists but not guns at home, president says.

Laments lack of political action

• President Barack Obama said Thursday evening that the “routine” nature of mass shootings in America will continue unless the country’s politics changes.

“This is a political choice that we make, to allow this to happen every few months in America,” said the president, who was visibly frustrated as he delivered a statement on Thursday’s mass shooting in Roseburg, Ore.

Obama has frequently railed against Congress’ refusal to pass additional gun control measures in an effort to curb mass shootings, especially in the wake of the Dec. 14, 2012 massacre of 20 students and six teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. But on Thursday he delivered remarks in which he veered from anger to incredulity as he described his amazement that a slew of horrific attacks had failed to spur a response from Washington.

“There’s been another mass shooting in America,” he declared at the outset of his comments in the Brady Press Briefing Room, named for President Ronald Reagan’s press secretary who was shot during a March 1981 assassination attempt on the president. “That means there’s another community stunned with grief, and communities across the country forced to relive their own anguish, and parents across the country scared because they know it might have been their families and their children.”

“But as I said just a few months ago,” he said, his voice rising to a higher pitch, “and I said a few months before that, and I’ve said each time we see one of these mass shootings, our thoughts and prayers are not enough. It’s not enough.”

“It does not capture the heartache and grief and anger that we should feel,” he said, punctuating the word “anger” with added emphasis. “And it does nothing to prevent this carnage from being inflicted some place else in America.”

After noting how the country is willing to devote enormous resources to address other threats to human life, ranging from terrorist strikes to unsafe bridges, Obama questioned why there was a different response when it came to guns.

“So the notion that gun violence is somehow different? That our freedom, and our Constitution, prohibits any modest regulation of how we use a deadly weapon, when there are law-abiding gun owners all across the country who could hunt and protect their families and do everything they could do under such regulations?” he asked. “It doesn’t make sense.”

Obama bemoaned the fact that these tragedies had become so frequent, he said, they no longer shocked the public. He urged media outlets to list the number of Americans who die each year from terrorist attacks against the number who are killed by guns.

“Somehow, this has become routine,” he said, looking a bit incredulous at the prospect. “The reporting is routine. My response to it up here at this podium becomes routine.”

His voice took on an ironic tone: “Right now I can imagine the press releases being cranked out: ‘We need more guns.’”

“Does anybody really believe that?” he asked. “There are scores of responsible gun owners in this country, they know that’s not true.”

My response to it up here at this podium becomes routine