AFP, Washington :
US President Barack Obama said a “distressing” lack of progress on gun control legislation had been the greatest source of frustration during his time in office.
His comments came just hours before a gunman opened fire in a movie theater in the state of Louisiana, shooting dead two people before killing himself.
In interview with the BBC, Obama said the issue he felt “most frustrated and most stymied” by was legislators’ inability to push through limitations on access to arms, despite repeated massacres during his tenure.
Obama said his country was “the one advanced nation on Earth in which we do not have sufficient common-sense, gun-safety laws.”
He contrasted the numbers killed in terrorist attacks since 9/11 with near-routine killings by domestic shooters, highlighting a huge discrepancy in the figures.
“If you look at the number of Americans killed since 9/11 by terrorism, it’s less than 100. If you look at the number that have been killed by gun violence, it’s in the tens of thousands,” he said.
“And for us not to be able to resolve that issue has been something that is distressing. But it is not something that I intend to stop working on in the remaining 18 months (of his presidency).”
