Obama wants gun law passed within next year

US President Barack Obama said in an interview broadcast yesterday that he hopes to get new US gun-control measures passed during the first year of his second term and is sceptical of a proposal by the National Rifle Association (NRA) to put armed guards in schools.

Obama assigned vice-president Joe Biden to lead a task force to come up with proposals on guns at the beginning of 2013 after the massacre of 20 children and six adults at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, this month.

“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 NBC.