Obama calls for reckoning on gun access

WASHINGTON — U.S. President Barack Obama said Thursday the church shooting that left nine people dead shows the need for a reckoning on gun violence.

He acknowledged, though, that there’s no appetite in the U.S. Congress for tighter gun laws.

Obama, who knew the pastor killed in the attack in Charleston, S.C., said he has been called upon too often to mourn the deaths of innocents killed by those “who had no trouble getting their hands on a gun.”

“Now is the time for mourning and for healing,” Obama said. “But let’s be clear. At some point, we as a country will have to reckon with the fact this type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries. It doesn’t happen in other places with this kind of frequency. And it is in our power to do something about it.”

Those killed in Wednesday night’s shooting by a white man at the historic black Emanuel AME church included pastor and state Sen. Clementa Pinckney. Obama and first lady Michelle Obama got to know Pinckney during the 2008 presidential campaign.

The president referred fondly to “Mother Emanuel” as more than a church, calling it “a sacred place in the history of Charleston and in the history of America.”

Dylann Storm Roof, 21, was captured without resistance Thursday in Shelby, N.C., after an all-night manhunt and arrested in the shooting deaths. He waived his right to counsel and was taken into custody. Roof’s childhood friend, Joey Meek, had alerted the FBI after recognizing him in a surveillance camera image.

Meek said they had lost touch until Roof reappeared a few weeks ago.

“He said blacks were taking over the world. Someone needed to do something about it for the white race. He said he wanted segregation between whites and blacks. I said, ‘that’s not the way it should be.’ But he kept talking about it.”

Richard Cohen, president of Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks extremists, said Roof appears to be a “disaffected white supremacist” based on his Facebook page.

Obama acknowledged there was scant sentiment within the Republican-controlled Congress for stricter gun controls, saying he recognized “the politics in this town foreclose a lot of those avenues right now.”

But Obama held out hope for an eventual shift in attitudes.

“At some point it’s going to be important for the American people to come to grips with it, and for us to be able to shift how we think about the issue of gun violence collectively,” he said.