After Sikh temple shooting, Obama calls for "soul searching," ways to reduce violence
(CBS News) The shooting at a suburban Milwaukee Sikh temple on Sunday should spur leaders to pause and consider what they can do to prevent such tragedies, President Obama said Monday.
"I think all of us recognize that these kinds of terrible events are happening with too much regularity for us not to do some soul searching and examine additional ways we can reduce violence," Mr. Obama said following a bill signing in the Oval Office.
Six people were killed in the shooting on Sunday and three were injured before police shot and killed the gunman. The tragic incident came less than three weeks after a mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado.
The president said he and other officials are awaiting the outcome of the full investigation into the Sikh temple shooting. It's not yet clear what motivated the shooter, but Mr. Obama said that if he were motivated in any way by the ethnicity of those attending the temple, the American people would "immediately recoil at those kinds of attitudes."
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"I think it will be very important for us to reaffirm once again that in this country, regardless of what we look like, where we come from, who we worship, we are all one people and we look after one another and we respect one another," he said.
After the Aurora, Colo., shooting last month, some elected officials around the country as well as members of Congress renewed calls for new gun control measures, but Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi on Sunday told the Huffington Post that such measures had little chance of passing any time soon.
"The votes aren't there for gun control," she said. "We certainly aren't going to be able to do it in this Congress, and I don't know that we would be able to do it in a Democratic Congress because it takes a lot of votes to go down that path."
