President Obama pledged Sunday to make gun control a top priority in his second term and vowed to put his “full weight” behind such legislation.
“I’d like to get it done in the first year,” the president said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “This is not something that I will be putting off.”
Democratic lawmakers and some Republicans have called for immediate action in the aftermath of the Dec. 14 shootings in which 20 first-graders were killed inside a Connecticut elementary school.
Obama said Sunday he would not prejudge recommendations. But he said he was skeptical about the only answer being to put armed guards in schools, as the National Rifle Association has suggested.
The president instead vowed to rally Americans around an agenda to limit gun violence, adding he still supports increased background checks and bans on assault weapons and high-capacity bullet magazines.
“I think there are a vast majority of responsible gun owners out there who recognize that we can’t have a situation in which somebody with severe psychological problems is able to get the kind of high capacity weapons that this individual in Newtown obtained and gun down our kids,” he said, in the interview taped Saturday. “And, yes, it’s going to be hard.”
Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who sponsored legislation that banned assault-style weapons from 1994 to 2004, said immediately after the tragedy at the Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Conn., that she would introduce similar legislation early next year, which would include bans on the high-capacity clips.
Feinstein declined to say on “Fox News Sunday” when she would introduce new legislation, but said it would essentially “strengthen” the 1994 bill.
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