Obama renews call for gun law change

President Barack Obama used a memorial service for the victims of America’s latest mass shooting on Sunday to make another impassioned appeal to reform gun ownership laws.
“No other advanced nation endures this kind of violence. None,” he declared, at a ceremony in the Washington Navy Yard, where a contractor killed 12 people in a gun rampage on Monday.
There have been several mass shootings in the United States in recent months, and after each, Obama has pushed the case for tighter controls on gun ownership, to no avail.
Lawmakers have thwarted attempts by Obama and his supporters to strengthen background checks for gun permits, citing the right to bear arms enshrined in the US constitution.
But Obama, while admitting that the message was far from new, said the latest bloodshed should be a wake-up call for Americans.
“Our tears are not enough. Our words and our prayers are not enough,” Obama said.  “If we really want to honor these 12 men and women, we really want to be a country where we can go do work and go to school and walk our streets free from senseless violence without so many lives being stolen by a bullet from a gun, we are going to have to change.

“Here in America, the murder rate is three times what it is in other developed nations,” he warned, citing Britain and Australia as countries that tightened gun law after mass shootings.
“The murder rate with guns is 10 times what it is in other developed nations. What is different in America is that it is easy to get your hands on a gun,” Obama added.
Obama admitted that it looked unlikely that change would come from Washington, but called on American voters to insist on reform.