President Obama promised Wednesday to lead a national discussion about gun control after the deadly mass shootings last week in Colorado, wading into the gun issue more extensively than at any other time in his presidency. 
 
 Even this week, White House press secretary Jay Carney indicated that the president was unlikely to push for new gun legislation, citing persistent opposition in Congress. But Obama told the National Urban League here that he believes a lot of gun owners would agree that “AK-47s belong in the hands of soldiers,” not civilians on American streets. 
 
 The president called the Aurora massacre an “extraordinarily heartbreaking tragedy.” But, he added, talk of reforming gun laws after similar mass shootings has too often been “defeated by politics and by lobbying and eventually by the pull of our collective attention elsewhere.” 
 
 Obama’s speech seemed sure to intensify the debate on gun control. The president’s comments were striking because he has generally been cautious on the politically potent issue of firearms — to the point that some prominent politicians and advocates had criticized him, accusing him of barely addressing gun regulations in the immediate aftermath of the massacre in Aurora. 
 
 Obama’s opponent in the presidential election, Mitt Romney, weighed in earlier Wednesday, saying that he saw no need for new gun restrictions after the Colorado rampage, allegedly carried out by a failed graduate student who used an assault rifle, a Glock semiautomatic handgun and a shotgun. 
 
 “I don’t happen to believe that America needs new gun laws. A lot of what this young man did was clearly against the law, but the fact that it was against the law did not prevent it from happening,” Romney told “NBC Nightly News” anchor Brian Williams in an interview taped in London as he embarked on a week-long foreign trip. 
 
 Romney acknowledged that as governor of Massachusetts he supported a bill that banned assault weapons, but he said he opposed a similar measure for the rest of the country. 
 
 “We can sometimes hope that just changing a law will make all bad things go away. It won’t,” Romney said. “Changing the heart of the American people may well be what’s essential to improve the lots of the American people.” 
 
 Obama gave few specifics Wednesday evening about what changes, if any, he might seek on guns, although his reference to AK-47s was sure to hearten advocates of an assault-weapons ban like the one passed during the Bill Clinton presidency, which expired in 2004. The current president, however, hasn’t advocated such a measure. 
 
 In his speech, Obama declared gun violence a national tragedy that reaches beyond mass shootings such as those in Aurora and in Tucson — where six people were killed and 13 wounded, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, in a January 2011 attack — and into the lives of innocent people struck down by criminals every day. 
 
 “For every Tucson or Aurora, there is daily heartbreak,” Obama said. “Violence plagues the biggest cities, but it also plagues the smallest towns.” 
 
 Obama said that laws should be better enforced and that guns should be kept out of the hands of people with mental illness. Although he reiterated his commitment to uphold gun owners’ Second Amendment rights to responsibly bear arms, he blamed Congress for inaction on what he called common-sense restrictions to keep guns out of the hands of criminals. 
 
 Well-funded gun-rights organizations such as the National Rifle Association exert great power in Congress, and public-opinion polls show that a declining number of Americans feel the need for stricter gun laws. ||||| NEW ORLEANS – President Obama touched the sensitive issue of guns here on Wednesday, pivoting off last week’s Colorado movie theater shootings to call for a “consensus around violence reduction" in the country. 
 
 With the last public event of a four-day trip that started with a visit to the Aurora, Colo., hospital where almost two dozen victims were brought after the shootings, Obama said he supports measures to conduct background checks to keep guns out of the hands of criminals, fugitives and the mentally ill. 
 
 “These steps shouldn’t be controversial, they should be common sense,” he told the National Urban League conference. 
 
 Obama's remarks in the Big Easy about guns were the most extensive of his term, going farther than what he said after the 2011 shooting in Tucson, where six people were killed, and former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) and a dozen others survived gunshot wounds. White House aides have acknowledged new gun laws are still politically impossible in the current election-year climate, but Obama's comments suggest he's at least willing to talk about the issue. 
 
 “I – like most Americans – believe that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual the right to bear arms,” Obama said. “I think we recognize the traditions of gun ownership passed on from generation to generation, that hunting and shooting are part of a cherished national heritage. 
 
 “But I also believe that a lot of gun owners would agree that AK-47s belong in the hands of soldiers and not in the hands of crooks. They belong on the battlefield of war, not on the streets of our cities,” he added. 
 
 Obama bemoaned the lack of political will to tackle gun issues, noting how congressional leaders have so far shown little interest in advancing new legislation following the Colorado shooting. 
 
 “When there’s an extraordinarily heartbreaking tragedy like the one we saw, there’s always an outcry immediately after for action,” Obama said. “There’s talk of new reforms. There’s talk of legislation. And too often those efforts are defeated by politics and by lobbying and eventually by the pull of our collective attention elsewhere. But what I said in the wake of Tucson is we’re going to stay on this persistently.” 
 
 Obama said he'd "continue to work with members of both parties and with religious groups and with civic organizations to arrive at a consensus around violence reduction." 
 
 And Obama had a message to Americans that went beyond government. 
 
 “As we convene these conversations, let’s be clear even as we debate government’s role, we have to understand that when a child opens fire on another child, there’s a hole in that child’s heart that government alone can’t fill," he said. "It’s got to be up to us as parents, as neighbors and as teachers and as mentors to make sure our young people don’t have that void inside them. It’s up to us to spend time with them. To pay more attention to them. To show them more love and they learn to love each other and they learn to love one another and they grow up knowing what it is to walk a mile in somebody else’s shoes and to view the world in somebody else’s eyes." 
 
 CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post misstated a quote from the president about background checks for gun purchases. Obama said, "[W]e should check someone’s criminal record before they can check out a gun seller." 
 
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– In the wake of the Aurora shootings, President Obama yesterday went further into the issue of gun control than he ever has, Politico reports. Speaking in New Orleans, Obama promised there would be a national conversation on the issue. Specifically, he declared support for background checks on gun buyers and better enforcement of gun laws, and said that "AK-47s belong in the hands of soldiers," not criminals—which could imply future support for an assault-weapons ban similar to one that expired in 2004, the Washington Post notes. The move is somewhat unexpected, since just this week White House press secretary Jay Carney implied Obama would not wade into the issue of new gun legislation, thanks in part to Congressional opposition. But yesterday, Obama said gun reform has too often been “defeated by politics and by lobbying and eventually by the pull of our collective attention elsewhere.” Also yesterday, Mitt Romney reiterated his position that stricter gun laws would not have made a difference in Aurora. “A lot of what this young man did was clearly against the law, but the fact that it was against the law did not prevent it from happening,” Romney told NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams.