THE White House says President Barack Obama doesn’t regret using the N-word to make a point about racial progress in an interview.

Spokesman Josh Earnest said the White House isn’t surprised that the president uttering a word used as a racial slur would stir controversy.

But Earnest said Mr Obama didn’t plan in advance to use the word to be provocative.

He said Mr Obama was speaking in a free-flowing, casual interview for a podcast and trying to make the point that ending racism is about more than manners.

Obama said that just because people realise it’s not polite to use the racial slur in public doesn’t mean that racism is “cured”.

Obama dropped the N-word in a poignant lament about racism and gun violence in the United States, as he praised Australia’s tough gun laws.

In his first presidential podcast, Mr Obama weighed in on the debate over race and guns that has erupted in America after the arrest of a white man, Dylann Roof, for the shooting deaths of nine black church members in Charleston, South Carolina.

“Racism, we are not cured of it,” Obama told Marc Maron on the comedian’s WTF podcast.

“And it’s not just a matter of it not being polite to say n***er in public. That’s not the measure of whether racism still exists or not. It’s not just a matter of overt discrimination. Societies don’t, overnight, completely erase everything that happened 200 to 300 years prior.”

The president said while attitudes about race have improved significantly since he was born to a white mother and black father, the legacy of slavery “casts a long shadow and that’s still part of our DNA that’s passed on.”

Mr Obama also expressed frustration that “the grip of the NRA (National Rifle Association) on Congress is extremely strong” and has prevented gun control from advancing.

Mr Obama pointed to Australia’s swiftly introduced, post-Port Arthur massacre gun laws as an example for America.

“When Australia had a mass killing, I think it was in Tasmania about 25 years ago, it was just so shocking to the system, the entire country said, ‘We’re going to completely change our gun laws’,” he said. “They did and it hasn’t happened since.”

In 1996, 28-year-old Martin Bryant killed 35 people at the historic Port Arthur tourist site in Tasmania and soon after Prime Minister John Howard led the introduction of strict gun laws in Australia.

A year ago, Mr Obama also publicly pointed to Australia as an example after, in the space of a few days, a student was shot dead at an Oregon high school and a couple went on a shooting rampage in Las Vegas that left two policemen and a Wal-Mart shopper dead.

After mentally ill 20-year-old Adam Lanza shot 20 children and six adult staff dead at Connecticut’s Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012 Obama attempted to introduce expanded background checks for gun purchases, but it was blocked by Congress.

“I will tell you, right after Sandy Hook, Newtown (in 2012), when 20 six-year-olds are gunned down, and Congress literally does nothing — yes, that’s the closest I came to feeling disgusted,” Mr Obama said. “I was pretty disgusted.”

Another attempt to ban semiautomatic weapons was also beaten.

Since the Sandy Hook massacre it has become easier to carry guns in public in some US states.

Mr Obama said gun manufacturers “make out like bandits” after each massacre with spikes in gun and ammunition sales because of fear the government would take Americans’ guns.

New laws need to respect the traditions of gun ownership in the US, he added.

“The question is just, ‘Is there a way of accommodating that legitimate set of traditions with some commonsense stuff that prevents a 21-year-old who is angry about something or confused about something, or is racist, or is deranged, from going into a gun store and suddenly is packing and can do enormous harm?’” Mr Obama asked, in a reference to Charleston shooting suspect Dylann Storm Roof.

Mr Obama continued: “It is not something we have fully come to terms with. Unfortunately the grip of the NRA on Congress is extremely strong. I don’t foresee any legislative action being taken in this Congress and I don’t foresee any real action being taken until the American public feels a sufficient sense of urgency and say to themselves, ‘This is not normal. This is something we can change and we’re going to change it’. If you don’t have that kind of public and voter pressure, then it’s not going to change from the inside.”