Sandy Hook: Photo Shows Moment President Obama Learned About School Shooting

The Sandy Hook Elementary School Shooting was the “lowest moment” of his presidency, Barack Obama said.

Now a photograph from White House photographer Pete Souza documents the exact moment that the president learned about the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. The photograph was released as part of Souzsa’s best of 2012 collection. In it, Obama leans back on a couch while counterterrorism adviser John Brennan breaks the news.

Released Thursday, the photo showed up in a number of publications including The Huffington Post.

Obama responded quickly to the Sandy Hook shooting, using a nationally televised address to call for stricter gun control. He continued that push on other programs as well.

“I think anybody who was up in Newtown, who talked to the parents, who talked to the families understands that something fundamental in America has to change,” Obama told David Gregory on NBC’s Meet the Press. “And all of us have to do some soul searching, including me as president, that we allow a situation in which 20 precious small children are getting gunned down in a classroom.

Obama added that he hopes public attention does not fade away from Sandy Hook as days pass into months.

“[T]he question then becomes whether we are actually shook up enough by what happened here that it does not just become another one of these routine episodes where it gets a lot of attention for a couple of weeks and then it drifts away,” Obama said of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. “It certainly won’t feel like that to me. This is something that — ya know, that was the worst day of my presidency. And it’s not something that I want to see repeated.”