“As much as we grieve this particular tragedy, I think it’s important, as I mentioned at the White House, to step back and recognize these tragedies have become far too commonplace.
“More than 11,000 Americans were killed by gun violence in 2013 alone — 11,000. If Congress had passed some common-sense gun safety reforms after Newtown, after a group of children had been gunned down in their own classroom — reforms that 90 percent of the American people supported – we wouldn’t have prevented every act of violence, or even most.
"We don’t know if it would have prevented what happened in Charleston. No reform can guarantee the elimination of violence. But we might still have some more Americans with us.
“We might have stopped one shooter. Some families might still be whole. You all might have to attend fewer funerals.
“Ultimately, Congress will follow the people. And we have to stop being confused about this. At some point, as a country, we have to reckon with what happens. It is not good enough simply to show sympathy.
"You don’t see murder on this kind of scale, with this kind of frequency, in any other advanced nation on Earth. Every country has violent, hateful, or mentally unstable people. What’s different is not every country is awash with easily accessible guns.
"And so I refuse to act as if this is the new normal, or to pretend that it’s simply sufficient to grieve, and that any mention of us doing something to stop is somehow politicizing the problem.
"We have the capacity to change, but we have to feel a sense of urgency about it. We, as a people, have got to change.
"That’s how we honor those families. That’s how we honor the families in Newtown. That’s how we honor the families in Aurora," President Obama said at the U.S. Conference of Mayors annual meeting in San Francisco.
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