San Bernardino shooting: Obama says mass shootings in US have 'no parallel' anywhere else in world

Police believe that at least 14 people have been killed and the same number injured in Wednesday's incident

Barack Obama said the US's pattern of mass shootings had no parallel anywhere in the world (CBS)

President Obama decried the shooting in San Bernardino, saying: “The one things we do know is that we have pattern now of mass shooting in this country that has no parallel anywhere else in the world.”

Speaking to CBS at the White House, he added: “We don’t know that much yet; it’s still an active situation. It does appear there are going to be some casualties and obviously our hearts go out to victims and the families.

It was the seventh time that the US president had denounced a mass shooting within the last five months. He again called for changed to gun laws that he said would “not…eliminate every one of these mass shootings but to improve the odds they don’t happen as frequently”.

He said these could include stronger background checks, and gun safety laws.

“We have a [TSA] no-fly list of people who can’t get on planes. Those people can’t fly, but they can go into a store right now and get firearm, and that’s a law that need to be changed,” he said.

“We don’t yet know what motives of these shooters are, but what we do know is there are steps we can take to make Americans safer and we should come together… to make these rare, as opposed to normal. We should never think this is something that just happens in the ordinary course of events.”