President Barack Obama once again pressed to enact stricter gun control measures Saturday in response to the shooting at a Planned Parenthood building in Colorado Springs on Friday.
A gunman armed with an AK-47-style weapon entered a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs Friday morning, killing three people, including police officer Garrett Swasey, and wounding nine others during the five-hour standoff, reported MSNBC.
"This is not normal. We can't let it become normal. If we truly care about this - if we're going to offer up our thoughts and prayers again, for God knows how many times, with a truly clean conscience - then we have to do something about the easy accessibility of weapons of war on our streets to people who have no business wielding them. Period. Enough is enough," Obama said, according to The Huffington Post.
Obama often presses for tighter restrictions on guns after mass shootings. Last month, after a gunman killed 10 people in a classroom at a community college in Oregon, Obama suggested the U.S. should model its gun laws after Australia and Great Britain, where mandatory gun confiscation measures were enacted following mass shootings, as HNGN previously reported.
The Planned Parenthood gunman was identified as 57-year-old Robert Dear of North Carolina. He walked out of the facility around 5 p.m. local time and surrendered, and his motive has not yet been identified.
"What we do know is that he killed a cop in the line of duty, along with two of the citizens that police officer was trying to protect," Obama said. "We know that law enforcement saved lives, as so many of them do every day, all across America. And we know that more Americans and their families had fear forced upon them."
Vicki Cowart, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, said in a statement that the shooting could have been a result of extremists "creating a poisonous environment that feeds domestic terrorism in this country," reported CNN.
