President Barack Obama has vowed to put his "full weight" behind forthcoming gun control legislation, while expressing "scepticism" over the National Rifle Association's plan to stage a gun in every school.
In an interview with NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday, the president – who has been reluctant to enter into a debate on guns while in office – said he hopes to get new weapons laws through Congress in 2013.
The recent shooting at a Connecticut elementary school – in which 20 first-graders were killed alongside six adults – was, Obama said, the "worst day" of his presidency.
That incident has reignited debate in the US over its lax gun controls. It was carried out with the use of an apparently legally bought assault rifle owned by the gunman's mother.
In Sunday's interview, Obama said that he supported a ban on such weapons and high-capacity bullet magazines
"I'm going to be putting forward a package and I'm going to be putting my full weight behind it. And I'm going to be making an argument to the American people about why this is important and why we have to do everything we can to make sure that something like what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary does not happen again," he said in the interview.
He also expressed a desire to push through new legislation as quickly as possible.
In the aftermath of the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting, Obama assigned vice-president Joe Biden to lead a task force to come up with proposals to clamp down on gun violence.
"I'd like to get it done in the first year. I will put forward a very specific proposal based on the recommendations that Joe Biden's task force is putting together as we speak. And so this is not something that I will be putting off," Obama told Meet the Press.
Obama also made guarded comments aimed at the influential lobbying group the NRA.
The pro-gun group broke its silence over the Sandy Hook massacre a week ago, suggesting that stationing an armed guard in every school across the America would prevent a repeat event.
The NRA's comments have been roundly condemned by anti-violence campaigners as insensitive, with the plan itself being dismissed as unworkable, costly and ineffective.
Obama fell well short of echoing such criticisms, but he did say he was "sceptical".
"I am sceptical that the only answer is putting more guns in schools. And I think the vast majority of the American people are sceptical that that somehow is going to solve our problem," he said.
The president has faced criticism for failing to take on the gun lobby after other mass shootings that have occurred under his watch. During his first term, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence graded him an "F" for failure to tackle the issue.
In comments to Meet the Press, the president appeared to give hope to those who believe the latest atrocity would force Obama to act.
"And the question then becomes whether we are actually shook up enough by what happened here that it does not just become another one of these routine episodes where it gets a lot of attention for a couple of weeks and then it drifts away. It certainly won't feel like that to me," he said.
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