After yet another school shooting, US President Barack Obama says America has some soul-searching to do on the subject of guns, noting that no other developed nation would tolerate the “off the charts” level of gun violence plaguing the United States.

Mr. Obama also praised Australia’s gun laws, noting that Oz hadn’t had a single mass shooting after the crackdown on gun violence in the wake of 1996’s Port Arthur shootings – as opposed to the US.

“This is becoming the norm.  And we take it for granted in ways that, as a parent, are terrifying to me.  Right now, it’s not even possible to get even the mildest restrictions through Congress,” Obama said, lamenting the political deadlock in Washington.  “We should be ashamed of that.”

The President made his comments in reply to a question about the latest school shooting, which took place earlier in the morning just outside Portland, Oregon.  A gunman entered Reynolds High School, shot and killed 14-year old Emilio Hoffman, and then likely killed himself.  A teacher was also injured.

On Sunday, two heavily-armed white supremacist losers ambushed and killed two cops in Las Vegas, a shopper at a Walmart, and themselves; last week, a student armed only with pepper spray subdued a mentally-ill man with a shotgun who stormed the Seattle Pacific University and killed another person; Last month, over-privileged but dateless twerp Elliot Rodger was so upset that his caustic personality precluded him from getting a girlfriend that he went on a shooting spree in the idyllic California college town of Santa Barbara, killing three people and himself.

There have been more than 70 mass shootings since 14 December 2012, when a profoundly disturbed young man shot and killed 20 young children and six staffers at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut.  At the time, people said it was America’s tipping point, that the gun laws had to change.

The gun laws haven’t changed yet.