Obamas mark Newtown anniversary

President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama on Saturday commemorated the first anniversary of the shooting massacre in Newtown, Conn., by lighting 26 candles to mark each of the schoolchildren and teachers who died at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

{mosads}The silent remembrance at the White House was brief. The president and Mrs. Obama walked into the Map Room shortly before 9:30 a.m and lit small glass-encased candles arranged in two rows on a table, according to a White House pool report.

They stood with their heads bowed for about a minute and left the room without speaking to reporters.

Obama spoke separately about the anniversary during his weekly address, alluding to his failed push to pass gun-control measures in Congress. There have been several school shootings in the year since the massacre at Sandy Hook, including one on Friday in which a gunman shot two students and then himself at a high school in Colorado.

“We haven’t yet done enough to make our communities and our country safer,” the president said in his taped video address. “We have to do more to keep dangerous people from getting their hands on a gun so easily. We have to do more to heal troubled mind.”

Lawmakers from Connecticut and around the country also marked the Newtown anniversary with statements and Twitter messages. “Saying a prayer for #Newtown today,” Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) wrote on Twitter.