In his first appearance on the Sunday shows in over three years, President Barack Obama called the Newtown shooting the worst day of his presidency and vowed he would throw his “full weight” behind gun control measures and warned “there will be resistance.”
On NBC’s “Meet The Press,” Mr. Obama told David Gregory:
“It is not enough for us to say, ‘This is too hard so we’re not going to try.’ So what I intend to do is I will call all the stakeholders together. I will meet with Republicans. I will meet with Democrats. I will talk to anybody.
“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. And, yes, it’s going to be hard.”
Asked for his views on a National Rifle Association (NRA) proposal to protect school children by putting armed guards in schools, Mr. Obama said, “I am skeptical that the only answer is putting more guns in schools. And I think the vast majority of the American people are skeptical that that somehow is going to solve our problem.”
Mr. Obama’s comments come as House Democrats say they will introduce legislation to ban the production of high-capacity magazines on day one of the new session.