The announcement will be the third time in five days Obama has addressed the massacre. Obama wants 'concrete proposals'

President Barack Obama vowed Wednesday to act to combat gun violence, as he launched a panel led by Vice President Joe Biden that will quickly offer recommendations to him in the aftermath of Friday’s mass shooting in Newtown, Conn.

“The fact that this problem is complex can no longer be an excuse for doing nothing,” Obama said at the White House. “The fact that we can’t prevent every act of violence doesn’t mean we can’t steadily reduce the violence and prevent the very worst violence.”


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The Biden-led working group will produce “concrete proposals” by January that Obama said he “intend[s] to push without delay” and will include them in his State of the Union Address. Biden joined Obama at the announcement but did not speak.

“There’s already a growing consensus for us to build from,” Obama said. “A majority of Americans support banning the sale of military-style assault weapons. A majority of Americans support banning the sale of high-capacity ammunition clips. A majority of American support laws requires background checks before all gun purchases.” The new Congress, he said, should vote on all these measures and prioritize confirming a new leader for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

But pressed by a reporter to explain his own inaction during his first term in a question, Obama got testy, listing the other issues he had to tackle over the last four years.

“Here’s where I’ve been … I’ve been president of the United States dealing with the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, an auto industry on the verge of collapse, two wars. I don’t think I’ve been on vacation,” he said. “I think all of us have to do some reflection on how we prioritize what we do here in Washington.”

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Obama’s announcement — in the White House briefing room, named for James Brady, a Reagan press secretary who was wounded by a gunshot in an assassination attempt — was the third time in five days that he addressed the massacre that killed 20 first-graders and six adults at the Sandy Hook Elementary School.

“This should be a wake-up call for all of us” that there’s more to be done to keep the country safe.

“If we work harder to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people, there would be fewer atrocities like the one in Newtown, or any of the lesser known tragedies that visit small towns and big cities all across America every day,” he said, listing several fatal shootings that have happened since Friday. “Each one of these Americans was a victim of the everyday gun violence that takes the lives of more than 10,000 Americans every year, violence that we cannot accept as routine.”

But as Obama pledged to take action to combat violence, he toed a narrow line, reaffirming his belief that the Second Amendment “guarantees an individual a right to bear arms” and that the country has “a strong tradition of gun ownership.”

Attorney General Eric Holder, Education Secretary Arne Duncan, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano will work on the effort, a White House official said. Outside groups will be consulted, but the official would not specify which groups will be involved.

Reaction from gun-control advocates to the president’s announcement was positive.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he spoke to Biden earlier Wednesday and offered “my full support for his efforts.”

“I was very encouraged by the president’s strong statement and his announcement is an important step in the right direction,” Bloomberg said. “The country needs his leadership if we are going to reduce the daily bloodshed from gun violence that we have seen for too long.” He also called on Obama to take executive action where possible to appoint a new ATF director while Congress is in recess, and to step up the prosecution of people who try to buy guns illegally.

Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.) said she is hopeful that the president will move quickly. “When he said he wanted it done within the month, we can do that … because the American people are crying out for us to do something,” she said on MSNBC.

The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence also heralded Obama’s vow to act. “The urgency with which the president is taking this issue on is a tremendous step forward,” the group’s president, Dan Gross, said in a statement. “We are hopeful that the task force being led by Vice President Biden will produce real results in real time and we will do everything we can to be constructive partners in that effort.”

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Mark Glaze, the director of Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns group, said he didn’t resent Obama’s inaction before the Newtown shooting. “I think people recognize that he has had his hands full and this problem has gone on too long and that he appears ready to engage,” he said. “None of us get a pass for not doing enough, but this is not only the president’s problem. I think there are a lot of people who are going to be looking closely at what the congressional leadership has to say in the coming days because we can do this, but it’s going to take a village.”

Though Obama has long said he favors reinstating the 1994 assault weapons ban, which expired in 2004, he has spent almost no political capital as president to enact any new restrictions on gun rights, despite mass shootings in Tucson, Ariz., Oak Creek, Wis., and Aurora, Colo., before Newtown.

But the Connecticut killings seem to have struck a chord with Obama — he teared up while delivering a four-minute statement at the White House Friday, then Sunday pledged to help prevent more mass killings. And it has shifted at least three NRA-backed Democratic senators: Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Mark Warner and Virginia.

Obama on Tuesday called Manchin, who in a 2010 campaign ad titled “Dead Aim” touted his NRA endorsement before firing his rifle at a copy of proposed cap-and-trade legislation, to discuss how to proceed.

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Valerie Jarrett, an Obama senior adviser who traveled with him to Connecticut for the vigil on Sunday, spent an hour on Tuesday meeting in the White House Roosevelt Room with 10 victims of past mass shootings and Gross, of the Brady Campaign.

Gross said that Jarrett didn’t reveal what Obama plans to do but accepted a letter to the president from the delegation of victims.

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“She in no uncertain terms reaffirmed the president’s commitment to doing whatever he can … to make this the best nation that we can be and protect the safety of our kids,” Gross said. “She said that we need to look at the issue comprehensively and policy is part of it.”

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Before their White House meeting Tuesday, the Brady delegation met at the Capitol with Democrats, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and, in what Gross said was a first for the group, representatives of House Republicans.

“We seem to be at a unique moment in time where there seems to be significantly more momentum,” Gross said. “It clearly demonstrated that we’re having this conversation in a different way than we have in the past.”

The momentum that gun control advocates feel is on their side has come during a near-total media blackout from the NRA. The gun-rights advocacy organization went silent from the time of the Newtown massacre Friday morning until its announcement late Tuesday afternoon that it is “shocked, saddened and heartbroken by news of the horrific and senseless murders in Newtown.”

The NRA announced plans for a “major news conference” on Friday, adding “the NRA is prepared to offer meaningful contributions to help make sure this never happens again.”

But while the NRA went silent on social media and did not respond to reporters’ requests for five days, its regular online news show portrayed many of the talking points the organization is likely to pursue.

On Tuesday’s edition of the NRA’s nightly online news show, host Ginny Simone called the 1994 assault weapons ban “a ban we all know was a failed experiment from the start.”

“What we need to do is stop making schools magnets for mass murderers like Adam Lanza,” Simone said while introducing an interview with Dave Kopel of the Independence Institute. Kopel and Simone then discussed Connecticut’s existing gun laws and how they failed to prevent Newtown, and called for more school employees to be armed.

Biden piloted Obama’s middle-class task force and was in charge of stimulus spending accountability.

Gross and other advocates are pushing for a legislative solution, some of which Obama already supports.

White House press secretary Jay Carney on Tuesday reiterated Obama’s past support for the idea of an assault weapons ban and closing “the so-called gun show loophole.” Carney said the president could also back a prohibition on high-capacity ammunition clips like those used in the Aurora and Newtown shootings. Obama didn’t get into detail on Wednesday, but did note that polls show those ideas have broad support among the American people.

Apart from pushing Congress to pass new gun laws — which faces many obstacles, including GOP control of the House for the next two years — Obama has a few steps he could take on his own, like a broader requirement that gun dealers to notify the government of any purchase of multiple semi-automatic weapons. Such notifications are already required in the four states that border Mexico.

“We can’t tolerate this anymore,” Obama said Sunday. “These tragedies must end. And to end them, we must change. We will be told that the causes of such violence are complex, and that is true. No single law — no set of laws can eliminate evil from the world, or prevent every senseless act of violence in our society.”