US President Barack Obama promised to send Congress broad proposals in January for tightening gun laws and curbing violence, declaring the time for action overdue after last week’s massacre of children at a Connecticut school.

Even before those proposals are drafted, Obama pressed lawmakers to reinstate a ban on military-style assault weapons, close loopholes that allow gun buyers to skirt background checks and restrict high-capacity ammunition clips.

“The fact that this problem is complex can no longer be an excuse for doing nothing,”  Obama said in his most detailed comments on guns since Friday’s killing of 20 school children and six adults in Newtown, Connecticut. “The fact that we can’t prevent every act of violence doesn’t mean we can’t steadily reduce the violence.”

 

Gun control measures have faced fierce resistance in Congress for years but that may be changing now because of last week’s violence.

Since then, Obama has signaled for the first time in his presidency that he's willing to spend political capital on the issue and some prominent gun-rights advocates in Congress — Democrats and Republicans alike — have expressed willingness to consider new measures.