Obama mourns Charleston shooting: 'This type of violence does not happen in other advanced countries'

(Image credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

published 18 June 2015

In a somber press conference Thursday, President Obama mourned the nine victims who were killed when a gunman opened fire Wednesday night during a prayer meeting at a Charleston, South Carolina church. Obama decried the attack, which the FBI is investigating as a hate crime, for its allegedly racist undertones, and lamented the lack of tighter gun-control laws. "Once again, innocent people were killed because someone who intended harm had no trouble getting hands on a gun," he said. "At some point, we as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this type of mass violence doesn't happen in other advanced countries... with this frequency."

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Samantha Rollins is TheWeek.com's news editor. She has previously worked for The New York Times and TIME and is a graduate of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.

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