Democrats urge gun reform amid Atlanta shootings [Video]

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:

• Democratic senators called for a “reasonable gun reform” in the country following the multiple shootings in spas and massage parlors in Atlanta.
• According to Senator Raphael Warnock, the “shooter was able to kill all of these folks the same day he purchased a firearm.”
• The shooter killed eight people, six of which were Asian American women.

The shooting spree in Atlanta has prompted Senator Raphael Warnock and other Democratic senators to call for gun reform and tighter restrictions on gun laws.

The shooting that targeted workers at three spas and massage parlors last week killed eight people, six of which were Asian American women — leading to a regulated-gun-purchase pitch.

“We need reasonable gun reform in our country,” Warnock, a Georgia Democrat, said in an interview on Sunday with NBC.

“This shooter was able to kill all of these folks the same day he purchased a firearm. But right now what is our legislature doing? They’re busy under the gold dome here in Georgia trying to prevent people from being able to vote the same day they register,” the senator added.

Warnock suggested that the Republican-run Georgia state government’s haste to pass laws that would restrict the constitutional right of voting amid its inactivity on restricting guns that could “create this much carnage and violence on the same day” is “a distortion of values.”

The incident brought anti-Asian American violence to public attention, with rallies and vigils happening across the country in light of the appeal. On Saturday, hundreds of people gathered for a “Stop Asian Hate” rally.

Bee Nguyen, the first Vietnamese American elected to Georgia’s House of Representatives, said that the victims had “no one in their community to watch their back … and we are left with deep grief and rage and sorrow.”

Robert Aaron Long, the suspect in the shootings and a white man, has confessed that he was the shooter. Long said that he did the crimes as an attempt to dismiss his “sexual addiction,” which advocates described as violent misogyny with racist tropes of sexualizing Asian women.

He was charged with one count of assault and multiple counts of murder.

While President Joe Biden and the White House have yet seconded the need for broad gun control reform, former president Barack Obama forcefully demanded restrictions.

He tweeted: “Yesterday’s shootings are another tragic reminder that we have far more work to do to put in place commonsense gun safety laws and root out the pervasive patterns of hatred and violence in our society.”

Source: Independent.com