Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton said Wednesday that she felt “great heartache” over the shooting ambush that killed a TV news reporter and cameraman live on air in Virginia, pledging that as president she would fight for more gun-control laws.

“We have got to do something about gun violence in America — and I will take it on,” Mrs. Clinton said in an on-camera statement to reports while on campaign trail in Iowa.

In an emotional plea for more restrictive gun laws, Mrs. Clinton said that too many people known that the availability of firearms is a problem in the United States but avoid the subject because “it is hard.”

“It is a very political, difficult issue in America,” he said. “But I believe we are smart enough, we are compassionate enough to figure out how to balance the legitimate Second Amendment rights with preventive measures and control measures so that whatever motivated this murderer, who eventually took his own life — we will not see more deaths, needless, senseless deaths.”

Mrs. Clinton expressed condolences and sympathies to the families of WDBJ reporter Alison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward, who were killed in the attack during a morning live shot, and Vicki Gardner, executive director of the Smith Mountain Lake Regional Chamber of Commerce, who was being interviewed by Ms. Parker and was injured in the shooting.

“I feel just great heartache at what happened,” said the former first lady, senator and secretary of state.

Mrs. Clinton said that there was evidence that tougher gun laws would stop the gun violence, but gun-rights advocates dispute those claims.

She vowed not to “let another terrible incident go by without trying to do something more to prevent this incredible killing that is stalking our country and we’ve had so many terrible instances of it in the last two years,” she said.

“It happens every day and there is so much evidence that if guns were not so readily available, if we had universal background checks, if we could put some timeout between the person who is upset because he got fired or the domestic abuse or whatever other motivation may be working on someone who does this — that maybe we could prevent this kind of carnage,” Mrs. Clinton said.

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