Obama: I'm not giving up on guns 'I refuse to act as if this is the new normal,' Obama tells conference of mayors.

SAN FRANCISCO—Wrapping together his frustrations with the country’s continuing problems with racism and his own inability to make progress on gun control in the wake of the South Carolina church shooting, President Barack Obama stood before a bipartisan gathering of mayors here Friday and declared, “It is not good enough simply to show sympathy.”

“The apparent motivations of the shooter remind us that racism remains a blight that we have to combat together. We have made great progress but we have to be vigilant because it still lingers,” Obama said.


There must be a popular outcry for gun control, Obama said, to change the minds of a Congress that he said he knows right now won’t touch the issue.

“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 it is somehow politicizing the problem,” he said.

Obama said he knew his comments about the lack of hope for gun control in the current Congress when making his initial comments about shooting at the White House on Thursday were interpreted as resignation. They weren’t, he insisted.

“I am not resigned. I have faith we will eventually do the right thing. I was simply making the point that we have to move public opinion. We have to feel a sense of urgency,” he said.

America, Obama said, is “awash with easily accessible guns.”

If Congress had moved on actions that polls showed 90 percent support for after the shootings in Newtown, Conn. in December 2013, Obama said, lives could have been saved. Maybe not those of the nine people in Charleston, he said. But some of thousands of Americans killed every year—11,000 dead by gun violence in 2013 alone, he reminded the crowd.

“We might still have some more Americans with us. We might have stopped one shooter. Some families might still be whole. We all might have to attend fewer funerals,” Obama said. “We should be strong enough to acknowledge this.”

The path forward in Washington remains hard to see.

In 2013 Obama blasted the “shameful” defeat of background check legislation in the Senate, which fell short breaking a filibuster in a 54-46 roll call. And though Democratic Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) often indicated he would try to revive the effort, he never returned to the matter while he controlled the Senate.

Now Republicans control the Senate and no one on Capitol Hill expects any movement on gun legislation with conservative majorities in both chambers of Congress and a wide-open GOP presidential primary that includes many strong backers of gun rights.

Obama on gun violence: 'I have faith we will eventually do the right thing'

In statement after statement this week following the South Carolina shootings, Democrats avoided calling for new gun restrictions as they lamented the horrific shooting — except for Reid, who accused Congress of shirking the views of the general public. Gallup polls show that a plurality of Americans still want stricter firearm sales laws, though the movement has lost support since the Sandy Hook shooting in Connecticut that spurred the Senate to action.

“I do not know how much longer we can we can avoid the views of the American public,” Reid said Thursday, criticizing the ability of mentally ill people and criminals to obtain firearms. “We shouldn’t allow them to buy guns. We should at least take that step and I hope we can do it.”

Burgess Everett contributed to this report.