President Barack Obama marked with a solemn candle-lighting ceremony the one-year anniversary of an elementary school shooting in Connecticut, a tragedy that spurred him to seek greater gun controls that Congress rebuffed.
In the White House map room, Obama and first lady Michelle Obama lit 26 candles, one for each of the victims of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown. The Obamas bowed their heads in a moment of silence and walked out together without speaking.
In Newtown, a church rang its bells 26 times to honor the 20 first-graders and six adult educators killed by Adam Lanza with a semiautomatic rifle. Lanza, 20, killed his mother before driving to the school that he had attended and embarking on a shooting spree. He then took his own life.
Other houses of worship in the Newtown area held private services observing the anniversary, though no formal public memorial was held, the Associated Press reported.
The massacre prompted Obama in January to introduce a package of proposals aimed at curbing gun violence, including bans on so-called assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines.
His proposals stalled in Congress. The Republican-led House of Representatives declined to act on any of the measures and the Democratic-led Senate failed to advance a bill aimed at expanding background checks of gun buyers.
Obama also took note of the shooting in his weekly radio and Internet address, saying, “We haven’t yet done enough to make our communities and our country safer. We have to do more to keep dangerous people from getting their hands on a gun so easily.”
In offering no legislative remedies, he also said, “We can’t lose sight of the fact that real change won’t come from Washington. It will come the way it’s always come -- from you. From the American people.”
States dealt with gun policy differently in the shooting’s aftermath. Twenty-eight states this year enacted laws lifting some gun restrictions. Twenty-one states, including Connecticut and New York, expanded them.
In Colorado, two Democratic state senators were recalled by voters in September after supporting a background-check law.
Yesterday in that state, a teenage gunman opened fire in his Denver-area high school with a shotgun while seeking out a specific teacher, the Associated Press reported. The shooter, identified by police as 18-year-old Karl Pierson, critically wounded a female student before taking his own life, AP said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Greg Giroux in Washington at [email protected]
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Steven Komarow in Washington at [email protected]
In the White House map room, Obama and first lady Michelle Obama lit 26 candles, one for each of the victims of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown. The Obamas bowed their heads in a moment of silence and walked out together without speaking.
In Newtown, a church rang its bells 26 times to honor the 20 first-graders and six adult educators killed by Adam Lanza with a semiautomatic rifle. Lanza, 20, killed his mother before driving to the school that he had attended and embarking on a shooting spree. He then took his own life.
Other houses of worship in the Newtown area held private services observing the anniversary, though no formal public memorial was held, the Associated Press reported.
The massacre prompted Obama in January to introduce a package of proposals aimed at curbing gun violence, including bans on so-called assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines.
His proposals stalled in Congress. The Republican-led House of Representatives declined to act on any of the measures and the Democratic-led Senate failed to advance a bill aimed at expanding background checks of gun buyers.
Obama also took note of the shooting in his weekly radio and Internet address, saying, “We haven’t yet done enough to make our communities and our country safer. We have to do more to keep dangerous people from getting their hands on a gun so easily.”
In offering no legislative remedies, he also said, “We can’t lose sight of the fact that real change won’t come from Washington. It will come the way it’s always come -- from you. From the American people.”
States dealt with gun policy differently in the shooting’s aftermath. Twenty-eight states this year enacted laws lifting some gun restrictions. Twenty-one states, including Connecticut and New York, expanded them.
In Colorado, two Democratic state senators were recalled by voters in September after supporting a background-check law.
Yesterday in that state, a teenage gunman opened fire in his Denver-area high school with a shotgun while seeking out a specific teacher, the Associated Press reported. The shooter, identified by police as 18-year-old Karl Pierson, critically wounded a female student before taking his own life, AP said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Greg Giroux in Washington at [email protected]
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Steven Komarow in Washington at [email protected]