Mass shooting

'Thoughts and prayers are not enough': Why the US has so many mass shootings

There was a palpable weariness in President Obama’s official response on Thursday to the gun carnage at Umpqua community college in Oregon. He leaned repeatedly on the word “another” – another mass shooting, another community stunned with grief, more American families “whose lives have been changed forever”.

But underneath the tired exterior of a president who has had to deliver essentially the same speech nine times over the past six years, there was also an evident seething anger. “Our thoughts and prayers are not enough,” he said. “It does not capture the heartache and grief we should feel, and it does nothing to prevent this carnage being repeated somewhere else in America.”