June 26, 2015

Obama delivers the eulogy for South Carolina state senator and Rev. Clementa Pinckney during Pinckney's funeral service June 26, 2015, in Charleston, South Carolina. Pinckney was one of nine people fatally shot June 17 during a prayer meeting in a Charleston church. A day after the shootings, Obama said politics was to blame for a lack of progress on gun control, a statement that some in the media interpreted as him giving up. The next day, he spoke passionately about the issue in front of the U.S. Conference of Mayors: “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,” Obama said. “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.” He added: "I want to be clear, I am not resigned. I have faith we will eventually do the right thing.”