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lauerzBarack Obama is under intensifying pressure to take the lead in a campaign for greater gun control following the Newtown massacre of young children.
The mayor of New York and leading US senators pressed the president on Sunday to tell Congress to reinstate a ban on assault weapons which are common to almost all recent mass shootings in the US, including Friday's tragedy in Connecticut in which 20 children, aged six and seven, and seven adults were killed.
Michael Bloomberg, the New York mayor, praised the president for his tearful reaction to the deaths but called on Obama, who has faced accusations of political cowardice over his failure to tackle gun control following other massacres, to make the issue a priority.
"It's time for the president to stand up and lead and tell the country what we should do. Not go to Congress and say: what do you guys want to do? This should be his number one agenda. He's the president of theUnited States and if he does nothing during his second term, something like 48,000 Americans will be killed with illegal guns. That's is roughly the number of Americans killed during the whole Vietnam war," said Bloomberg, on NBC's Meet the Press.
The mayor called for a renewal of the assault weapons ban that president Bill Clinton pushed through Congress in 1994, which also included restrictions on the size of bullet magazines. The Bush administration allowed it to lapse a decade later. Police say that the Newtown killer, Adam Lanza, used a semiautomatic rifle and two handguns.
"I don't think the founding fathers had the idea that every man, woman and child could carry an assault weapon," said Bloomberg. "I think the president through his leadership could get a bill like that through Congress, but at least he's got to try."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/dec/16/obama-gun-control-pressure-newtown
