Off the wire
• UC Berkeley, Berkeley Lab partner with China's Tsinghua on clean energy  • Roundup: Canadian stock market drops amid announcements from central bank, U.S. Fed  • Roundup: British parliament OKs airstrikes against IS in Syria  • White House lauds China-U.S. cyber dialogue as "important step" to advance bilateral ties  • G77, China urge developed countries to fulfil climate finance obligation  • Urgent: Obama renews call for stricter gun control after new mass shooting in California  • Chicago corn, wheat lower; soybeans extend gains on export sales  • 2nd LD Writethru: British parliament OKs airstrikes against IS in Syria  • Roundup: New UN-backed plan seeks to bolster disaster preparedness  • British construction PMI registers 55.3 in November  
You are here: 　 Home

1st LD Writethru: Obama renews call for stricter gun control after new mass shooting in California

Xinhua, December 3, 2015 Adjust font size:

U.S. President Barack Obama on Wednesday renewed his call for stricter gun control as law enforcement officers were still scrambling to capture three shooters who fled the scene after gunning down at least 14 people and injuring 14 others in Southern California.

"What we do know is that there are steps we can take to make Americans safer and that we should come together on a bipartisan basis at every level of government to make these (mass shooting incidents) rare as opposed to normal," said Obama in an interview with the U.S. TV network CBS News.

"We should never think that this is something that just happens in the ordinary course of events, 'cause it doesn't happen with the same frequency in other countries,'" he said, echoing the remarks he had already used on several occasions this year after mass shooting incidents.

At least 14 people were killed and 14 others injured in a shooting Wednesday in San Bernardino City of Southern California, and up to three shooters were still active, local police said.

According to the police, there were several hundred people inside the building when the shooting happened. The identity and motivation of the shooters were at this moment unknown.

The center is a non-profit organization offering services to individuals with developmental disabilities. It has about 670 employees and serve 3,000 families.

It was the second mass shooting in six days. On Friday, a shooter attacked a Planned Parenthood facility in the state of Colorado, killing three and unjuried several more.

Following the 2012 school mass shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, which claimed 28 lives, including 20 children, the Obama administration initiated but failed to push stronger gun control laws.

The laws, whose sections included expanded background checks and bans on assault weapons, were stymied in Congress after staunch opposition from Republican lawmakers and gun-rights lobby groups.

During his presidency, Obama has been confronted with more than a dozen of high-profile mass shootings, and in an interview earlier this year he called the failure to reform U.S. gun laws "one of the greatest frustrations" of his presidency.

"If you ask me where has been the one area where I feel that I've been most frustrated and most stymied, it is the fact that the United States of America is the one advanced nation on Earth in which we do not have sufficient common-sense gun safety laws, even in the face of repeated mass killings," Obama told BBC in an interview in July. Endit