"There's been another mass shooting in America - this time, in a community college in Oregon," he declared flatly at the outset of his comments in the Brady Press Briefing Room, named for President Ronald Reagan's press secretary who was shot during a March 1981 assassination attempt on that president.
"That means there's another community stunned with grief, and communities across the country are forced to relive their own anguish, and parents across the country who are scared because they know it might have been their families and their children.
"But as I said just a few months ago," he said, his voice rising to a higher pitch, "and I said a few months before that, and I said each time we see one of these mass shootings, our thoughts and prayers are not enough. It's not enough.
"It does not capture the heartache and grief and anger that we should feel," he said, punctuating the word "anger" with added emphasis.
"And it does nothing to prevent this carnage from being inflicted some place else in America."
After noting how the country was willing to devote enormous resources to address other threats to human life, ranging from terrorist strikes to unsafe bridges, Obama questioned why there was a different response when it came to guns.
"So the notion that gun violence is somehow different - that our freedom, and our Constitution, prohibits any modest regulation of how we use a deadly weapon, when there are law-abiding gun owners all across the country who could hunt and protect their families and do everything they could do under such regulations - doesn't make sense."
Obama bemoaned the fact that these tragedies had become so frequent that they no longer shocked the public.
He urged media outlets to list the number of Americans who died each year from terrorist attacks against the number killed by guns, to show how much greater a threat gun violence posed to the country.
Last year there were 18 terrorism deaths in the United States, and 3521 between 1970 and 2014.
However, there had been 9940 gun violence deaths, according to figures from the Global Terrorism Database and the Gun Violence Archive.
"Somehow this has become routine," he said, looking a bit incredulous at the prospect.
"The reporting is routine. My response here at this podium ends up being routine."
Rather than listing the numerous tragedies that had occurred during his time in office - in Newtown, in Charleston, South Carolina, where a gunman killed nine parishioners in an African-American church in June, and in countless other places - he noted that during an interview in July he bemoaned the fact that the United States was the "one advanced nation on earth" that has not adopted "common-sense gun safety measures" in the face of multiple mass shootings.
"And later that day there was a mass shooting in a movie theatre in Lafayette, Louisiana. That day," he said, his voice strained.
At times, his tone turned combative. "Right now I can imagine the press releases being cranked out: 'We need more guns', they'll argue. 'Fewer gun safety laws'. Does anybody really believe that?
"There are scores of responsible gun owners in this country, they know that's not true."
While the President said that the shooter, 26-year-old Chris Harper-Mercer, at Umpqua Community College was mentally ill - "it's fair to say anybody who does this has a sickness in their minds, regardless of what they think their motivations may be" - he also said other advanced countries with mentally ill citizens do not suffer the same fatalities.
"I'd ask the American people to think how they can get our Government to change these laws, and to save lives, and to let young people grow up.
"And that will require a change of politics on this issue," he said, adding that "this cause of continuing death for innocent people should be a factor" at the ballot box.
"And each time this happens," he vowed, "I'm going to bring this up. Each time this happens I am going to say we can actually do something about it, but we're going to have to change our laws.
"I hope and pray that I don't have to come out again during my tenure as President to offer my condolences to families in these circumstances. But based on my experience as President," he said, looking grim, "I can't guarantee that.
"And that's terrible to say. And it can change."
After uttering a prayer for the victims and their families, the President turned and walked out of the room.
The press corps sat in their seats, silent.
Shooter asked victims to state religion
A growing number of reports yesterday indicated the gunman at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, asked students about their religion before shooting.
According to the Los Angeles Times, Ana Boylan, a student who was shot in the back, told her grandmother from her hospital bed that as she lay wounded, the gunman, identified as 26-year-old Chris Harper-Mercer, asked people to rise and state their religion.
"If they said they were Christians, they were shot again," the grandmother, Janet Willis, told the Times.
"And they would stand up and he said, 'Good, because you're a Christian, you're going to see God in just about one second'," Boylan's father, Stacy, told CNN, relaying her account. "And then he shot and killed them. And he kept going down the line doing this."
David Jaques, publisher of the Roseburg Beacon News, told Fox News: "We have a text from allegedly one of the students who was in the room at the time. And it reads as follows: 'The shooter was lining people up and asking of they were Christian.
"If they said 'yes', then they were shot in the head. If they said 'no' or didn't answer, then they were shot in the legs."
The gunman killed nine people and wounded seven before he died in a shootout with police.
He opened fire in a classroom and moved to other rooms, methodically gunning down his victims, witnesses said.
Authorities said investigators were examining social media postings thought to be by the shooter. Several reports said he may have shared his intentions online beforehand.
Other reports said police recovered three handguns and an assault rifle at the scene with a cellphone that presumably belonged to the shooter, who wore a bulletproof vest.
There were also reports yesterday that three people were killed in a shooting in Inglis, Florida.
- additional reporting AFP
