(CNN) - In a speech after the Colorado shooting Friday, President Barack Obama asked Americans to pray, reflect and remember what's important in life while the city of Aurora mourned the dead and wounded.
"If there's anything to take away from this tragedy it's the reminder that life is very fragile. Our time here is limited and it is precious. And what matters at the end of the day is not the small things, it's not the trivial things, which so often consume us and our daily lives," Obama said in Fort Myers, Florida, before returning to the White House.
But Friday's shootings are likely to propel the issue of gun rights and gun safety into the national conversation again, even though the president did not address it on Friday and has largely avoided the subject while in office.
Daniel Vice, senior attorney for the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, criticized Obama on Friday for steering clear of the issue in office.
"President Obama has refused to even talk about guns. In a speech today he didn't even say the word 'gun.' The closest he came was 'gunman,' "Vice said. "Unfortunately the president has shown a lack of leadership in standing up to the gun lobby."
Talk of gun rights was largely absent from Obama's speech in the aftermath of the Fort Hood shooting in 2009 and after then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and others were shot in Tucson, Arizona, last year. Obama mentioned gun safety only in passing after the Tucson shootings to describe the polarizing nature of the issue.
However, amid renewed discussions, the president penned an opinion piece two months after the Tucson shootings that acknowledged the importance of the Second Amendment and called for a "focus" on "effective steps that will actually keep those irresponsible, law-breaking few from getting their hands on a gun in the first place." FULL POST