Obama said that Vice President Joe Biden would lead a working group on gun control legislation. (Getty Images/Win McNamee)

President Obama said he is impaneling a group of cabinet officials and outside advisers to come up with a list of gun control proposals that he said he would like to begin pushing early next year in the wake of last week’s massacre at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn.

Speaking at a White House press conference, Obama said that Vice President Joe Biden will head up the new working group, which will explore several topics such as a reinstatement of the assault weapons ban, the relationship between violent entertainment and gun violence, access to mental health and a leadership void at the federal agency responsible for investigating firearms.

“We may never know all the reasons why this tragedy happened,” Obama said of last Friday’s shooting spree at Sandy Hook Elementary School, when 20-year-old Adam Lanza gunned down 26 people, including 20 six- and seven-year-old students. “We do know that every day since, more Americans have died of gun violence.”

Obama said he expect’s Biden’s panel to work quickly and turn out proposals he can send to Congress by the end of the first month of his second term. “This is not some Washington commission,” the president said. “This is a team that has a very specific task, to put together real reforms right now.”

Biden, who stood by Obama’s side but did not speak himself during the press conference, was picked to lead this panel because of his authorship of 1994 anti-crime legislation that included a ban on the manufacture and sale of assault weapons.

“I urge the new Congress to hold votes on these measures next year in timely fashion,” Obama said. He also pointed out the fact that the Senate has not confirmed a director for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms in more than six years. “The agency that works most closely with state and local law enforcement, I’d suggest they make it a priority next year.”

Other items Obama that mentioned might come out of this new commission are closing loopholes that allow gun sales to be carried without background checks, and expanding access to mental health services.

“We’re going to need to work on making access to mental health at least as easy as access to a gun,” he said.

Before taking reporters’ questions, most of which focused on budget and tax negotiations between the White House and Congress, Obama listed off gun-related deaths that have occurred since the carnage in Newton last week.

Still, the politics of gun control are especially sticky, with the National Rifle Association exerting itself as one of the most powerful lobbies of the past 20 years. The NRA has gone nearly silent since last Friday, but is planning a news conference of its own later this week.

Obama was asked by USA Today’s David Jackson about the potential difficulty of passing gun control legislation. He said there are already some policy ideas to begin with.

“It’s not as if we need to start from scratch,” Obama said. “I don’t think our memory is so short that what we saw in Newtown isn’t lingering in a month. The NRA is an organization that has members who are mothers and fathers, and I would expect that they’ve been impacted by this.”

“A woman was shot in a Las Vegas hospital,” he said. “Three people were shot in a hospital in Alabama. Violence that we cannot accept as routine. I will use all the powers of this office aimed at efforts at preventing more tragedies like this. It may not be easy, but that cannot be an excuse not to try.”