Obama to US people: I’ve said this too many times

When Barack Obama reacted to the shooting of nine people in South Carolina, he said he had made statements on similar violence “too many times”.

The US president, who spoke in the aftermath of the shooting in a traditionally black church in Charleston, said that too many communities had had to endure such incidents.

President Obama made a similar statement when 13 people were killed in Binghampton, New York in April 2009.

Just months later he made a speech after 13 people died in Fort Hood, Texas, in November 2009 “in one of the worst mass shootings ever to take place on an American military base”.

‘Their lives ahead of them’

The president also spoke out when six people were killed in Tucson, Arizona in a supermarket car park in 2011, the cinema shooting in Colorado in 2012 and the Connecticut shoot shooting in 2013.

After that murderous rampage he said: “Those who died today were children, beautiful little kids between the ages of five and 10 years old.

“They had their entire lives ahead of them. Birthdays and graduations. Weddings. Kids of their own.”

After the killing of three people outside a Jewish community centre in Kansas he said: “We have to keep coming together, across faiths, to combat the ignorance and intolerance, including antisemitism, that can lead to hatred and to violence.”