Lawmakers and activists on both sides of the gun issue say this week's slaughter of nine people in a South Carolina church leaves the prospects that Congress would curb firearms right where they've been for years: dim for now.
President Barack Obama conceded Friday that congressional action to tighten federal firearms restrictions was unlikely soon. He said lawmakers will act eventually when they believe the public is demanding it.
But he also called for that national discussion on gun regulations, saying "it is not good enough simply to show sympathy."
"I refuse to act as if this is the new normal or to pretend that it's simply sufficient to grieve, and that any mention of us doing something to stop it is somehow politicizing the problem," Obama said at a speech before the U.S. Conference of Mayors in San Francisco.
Others cited little evidence that a white gunman's fatal shooting of nine black people in the iconic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church church in Charleston, South Carolina, would make congressional action more likely.
The shooter, 21-year-old Dylann Roof, bought the gun he used in the attack and was its registered owner, two of Roof's friends told NBC News Friday. Police confirmed that Roof bought the gun he used in the attack.
Connecticut Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy noted the Senate's defeat of guns measures following the 2012 killings in Newtown, Connecticut, when a gunman killed 26 children and educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School there.
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On Thursday night's episode of "The Daily Show," the normally ebullient Jon Stewart issued an incisive, serious monologue addressing what he viewed as American apathy in the face of gun violence and racism.
"I honestly have nothing other than just sadness once again that we have to peer into the abyss of the depraved violence that we do to each other and the nexus of a just gaping racial wound that will not heal yet we pretend doesn't exist," Stewart said.
