DENVER, Aug 8 (Reuters) - President Barack Obama used a campaign stop in Colorado on Wednesday to call for an end to "senseless violence" across the country, appealing to Americans to focus on ways to stop it.
Referring to the shootings at a movie theater in Colorado and at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin in recent weeks, as well as last year's shooting of former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and others in Arizona, Obama stopped short of calling for gun control but said concerted action was needed.
"We've got to put an end to this kind of senseless violence, whether it's in Aurora, whether it's in Oak Creek, whether it's in Tucson, whether it's in cities all across America where too many lives are cut short," he said in Denver.
"As one American family, we're going to have to come together and look at all the approaches that we can take to try to bring an end to it."
Obama's last trip to Colorado was to comfort the families and victims of the movie theater shooting in Aurora, a suburb of Denver. Earlier this week he ordered flags at U.S. government facilities to be flown at half staff out of respect for the victims of the shooting in the Milwaukee suburb of Oak Creek.
The Democratic president has been careful not to take a controversial stand on gun control, a politically tricky issue, especially during an election year. Gun ownership is a sensitive topic for many voters in states like Virginia and Ohio, which Obama hopes to win in the Nov. 6 election against Republican Mitt Romney. (Reporting by Jeff Mason and Laura MacInnis; editing by Christopher Wilson)
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