Speaking at a service for the victims of the Washington Navy Yard shooting on Sunday President Barack Obama lamented that Americans often feel that attacks like this are "just somehow the way it is" and called for change to be made in society to change that, according to the Associated Press.
"If we really want to honor these 12 men and women, if we really want to be a country where we can go to 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, then we're going to have to change," President Obama said.
The president acknowledged that less than a year ago after the Newtown tragedy efforts to pass stricter gun-control laws had failed. In order to get the laws to ever really change the push to do so won't come from Washington but from the American people who are sick and tired of the violence the president suggested, according to the New York Times.
"[It's not] whether as Americans we care in moments of tragedy," President Obama said. "Clearly we care. Our hearts are broken again. The questions is do we care enough? It ought to be a shock to all of us, as a nation and a people. It ought to obsess us. It ought to lead to some sort of transformation.
"We cannot accept this," President Obama continued. "As Americans bound in grief and love, we must insist here today there's nothing normal about innocent men and women being gunned down where they work."
Not all of the president's comments were specifically calling for political action to prevent another tragedy; the president also spoke about the people that were lost in the shooting, according to the Washington Post.
"These are not statistics. They are the lives that have been taken from us," President Obama said. "A husband lost his wife. Wives have lost their husbands. Sons and daughters have lost their moms and their dads. Little children have lost their grandparents. Hundreds in our communities have lost a neighbor. And thousands have lost a friend."
Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association, appeared on "Meet the Press" and blamed the shooting on lax security at the Navy Yard while dismissing the notion that stronger gun laws are needed to prevent such an incident, according to USA Today.
"A terrorist target - a high-value terrorist target - completely unprotected," LaPierre said. "The problem is there weren't enough good guys with guns. When the good guys with guns got there, it stopped."
