Newtown mom gives Obama’s weekly address

David (right) and Francine Wheeler (left), walk through the US Capitol while visiting members of Congress and urging them into passing tougher gun laws on Thursday in Washington, DC. The Wheelers lost their six-year-old son Ben in the shooting in Newtown. Francine Wheeler to delivered President Obama’s weekly radio address on gun control yesterday.

Reuters/Washington

Francine Wheeler blinked past her tears, looked straight into the camera and asked Americans to push for tougher gun laws, drawing on courage she said comes from the memory of her six-year-old son, Ben, murdered in his first-grade classroom in Newtown, Connecticut.

“His boundless energy kept him running across the soccer field long after the game was over,” said Wheeler, describing her son during what is usually President Barack Obama’s weekly Saturday address to the nation.

“He couldn’t wait to get to school every morning,” she said, her voice breaking, her husband David beside her, sighing and swallowing hard. The address was the culmination of a week of emotional pleas in Washington from families of the 26 people killed by a gunman at Sandy Hook Elementary School on Dec 14.

“To us, it feels as if it happened just yesterday,” Wheeler said, recounting the horror of waiting at the firehouse after the shooting “for the boy who would never come home.” The massacre has spurred Obama to propose new restrictions on guns - politically difficult measures in a country where constitutional rights to own guns are defended by powerful lobby groups like the National Rifle Association.

Obama brought the Newtown families to Washington on Monday aboard Air Force One after he gave a speech in Connecticut urging action on his plans.

Obama’s proposals to ban more types of military-style assault weapons like the one used in Connecticut and to limit the capacity of ammunition magazines appear to have a slim chance of clearing the Senate.

Even proposals widely supported by Americans - more background checks for gun sales and tougher penalties for gun trafficking - were at risk of faltering.

This week the Wheelers and other families of victims met with senators to urge them to support new laws. On Wednesday Senator Joe Manchin, a conservative Democrat and strong supporter of gun rights, was moved to tears by their stories.

“I feel Ben’s presence filling me with courage for what I have to do - for him and all the others taken from us so violently and too soon,” Wheeler said in the address, which was broadcast on radio stations and streamed on the Internet.

There were signs of progress this week, she said. Two conservative senators crafted a breakthrough deal to expand background checks, and others backed away from trying to block any debate on the measures.