WASHINGTON, DC, USA (AFP) — US President Barack Obama declared “enough is enough” and made an impassioned call for tighter controls on military-style weapons yesterday, a day after a gunman killed three people at a family planning centre.

The alleged shooter, Robert Lewis Dear, 57, entered a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs on Friday in a six-hour siege that left a policeman among the dead and nine others wounded.

Dear eventually surrendered and is in police custody, after just the latest deadly rampage to convulse the United States, although officials remain tight-lipped as to the gunman’s motives.

Obama said the suspect was armed with an assault weapon and had held hostages at the Planned Parenthood centre, from which he opened fire at people outside.

“This is not normal. We can’t let it become normal,” a clearly frustrated Obama said in a statement.

“If we truly care about this — if we’re going to offer up our thoughts and prayers again, for God knows how many times, with a truly clean conscience — then we have to do something about the easy accessibility of weapons of war on our streets to people who have no business wielding them.

The tragedy came a day after Americans celebrated their cherished Thanksgiving holiday, a time to relax with family, and which ushers in the holiday season in earnest.

Colorado Springs Police Chief Peter Carey told a press conference that he was “not aware” of any specific threat to the clinic, which performs abortions — a highly emotive and divisive issue in America.

Planned Parenthood — a major provider of women’s health services that receives funding from the Government — offers preventive check-ups, contraceptives and abortions.

It has 700 clinics around the United States and has been violently targeted before.