President Barack Obama chided opponents of his proposed new gun regulations at the White House on Thursday, citing the elementary school shooting massacre in Newtown, Conn. "Shame on us if we've forgotten," he said, and he urged Americans to pressure lawmakers to support universal background checks for would-be gun buyers, a proposal that polls show enjoys broad public support. That has become one of the key points of the Democratic gun control bill, which has stalled in the Senate and from which one key measure, an assault weapons ban, has already been excised for lack of support in the Senate. Just hours before Obama's remarks, Connecticut police had released chilling documents in the Newtown investigation, two suspects had pleaded not guilty in the mistaken-identity fatal shooting of Chicago teen Hadiya Pendleton and a retired Pennsylvania state trooper had shot dead his wife and then himself in a supermarket. At the White House after Obama's event, Pendleton's mother urged Congress to act. "Right now there's an epidemic happening, you know, and someone needs to get to work on it. It's time," she said.
