Washington, Jun 18 (EFE).- President Barack Obama raised the issue of U.S. gun violence on Thursday in his first public remarks following the fatal shooting of nine people inside an African-American church in Charleston, South Carolina.
"I've had to make statements like this too many times," he said from the White House press room, with Vice President Joe Biden at his side.
"Communities like this have had to endure tragedies like this too many times. We don't have all the facts, but we do know that, once again, innocent people were killed in part because someone who wanted to inflict harm had no trouble getting their hands on a gun," the president said.
The suspect in the massacre, a 21-year-old white man named Dylann Roof, was apprehended Thursday in Shelby, North Carolina.
The shooting occurred around 9 p.m. Wednesday, an hour after the suspect entered the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church during a prayer meeting.
The suspect killed all but three of the 12 other people who were in the church with him at the time of the attack.
Among the three men and six women slain was the church's senior pastor, state Sen. Clementa Pinckney, while one of the survivors said that the shooter told her he was sparing her life so she could "tell everybody what happened."
The president said that he and first lady Michelle Obama knew several members of the Emanuel AME congregation, including the Rev. Pinckney.
"And to say our thoughts and prayers are with them and their families, and their community doesn't say enough to convey the heartache and the sadness and the anger that we feel," Obama said.
"The fact that this took place in a black church obviously also raises questions about a dark part of our history. This is not the first time that black churches have been attacked," he said.
The Rev. Pinckney's cousin, Sylvia Johnson, told NBC that one survivor reported the shooter as saying: "I have to do it. You rape our women and you're taking over our country. And you have to go."
Emanuel AME, founded in 1816, has played a historic role in the life of Charleston's black community.
Both police chief Greg Mullen and Charleston Mayor Joe Riley characterized the massacre as a hate crime and U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced Thursday a parallel investigation by the FBI and Justice Department that could lead to federal civil rights charges against the perpetrator.
Media outlets reported that the gun used in the shooting was a birthday gift to Roof from his father.
"Now is the time for mourning and for healing," Obama said. "But let's be clear: At some point, we as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries. It doesn't happen in other places with this kind of frequency."
"And it is in our power to do something about it. I say that recognizing the politics in this town foreclose a lot of those avenues right now," the president added, alluding to his administration's unsuccessful efforts to get gun-control legislation through Congress.