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Choking up and wiping away tears, President Barack Obama said on Friday that "our hearts are broken" for the victims of a deadly shooting rampage at a Connecticut elementary school and called for "meaningful action" to curb gun violence, Reuters reported. 

"We've endured too many of these tragedies in the past few years," Obama said during a somber televised appearance in the White House briefing room just hours after one of the worst mass shootings in U.S. history.

Pausing to collect himself as he expressed "overwhelming grief" as a parent, Obama deplored the "heinous" attack by a heavily armed gunman who killed at least 27 people, including 20 children and himself, at a school in Newtown, Connecticut.

Obama, who has responded to previous shooting massacres by citing the need for a national conversation about gun violence, again stopped short of calling for tougher gun-control laws, considered politically risky in a country known for its flourishing gun culture.

But, little more than a month after his decisive re-election to a second term, he suggested that in the aftermath of Friday's tragedy he might be open to considering a less cautious approach.

"As a country, we have been through this too many times," Obama said, ticking off a list of recent shootings.

"And we're going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics," he said, in an apparent reference to the influence of the National Rifle Association, a powerful pro-gun lobby, in Congress.

Obama avoided making direct calls for gun control during his bitterly fought campaign for a second term, which he secured in the November 6 election.