NOVANEWS
On Friday night, Elliot Rodger, the 22-year-old son of a Hollywood director, stabbed three college students to death in his apartment before shooting dead three more students in the beach community of Isla Vista near the University of California at Santa Barbara.
The shooter also injured 13 people as he drove from block to block and also exchanged gunfire twice with police. At the end, he was found dead in his crashed car with an apparent gunshot wound to the head.
Among the dead was 20-year-old Christopher Martinez.
In an interview with CNN on Monday, Martinez’s father, Richard Martinez, said that “a rudderless bunch of idiots in government” are responsible for the tragic incident.
“I can’t tell you how angry I am. It’s just awful, and no parent should have to go through this,” Martinez said.
He said his son died because Congress rejected gun control legislation in the wake of the 2012 Newtown, Connecticut, school massacre.
“What has changed? Have we learned nothing? These things are going to continue until somebody does something, so where the hell is the leadership? Where the hell are these people we elect to Congress that we spend so much money on? These people are getting rich sitting in Congress, what do they do? They don’t take care of our kids,” Martinez said.
“My kid died because nobody responded to what happened at Sandy Hook. Those parents lost little kids. It’s bad enough that I lost my 20-year-old, but I had 20 years with my son, that’s all I’ll have. But those people lost their children at six and seven years old. How do you think they feel? And who’s talking to them now? Who is doing anything for them now? Who is standing up for those kids that died back then in an elementary school? Why wasn’t something done? It’s outrageous!” he added.
Legislation after Sandy Hook to broaden background checks for gun sales, ban assault weapons and limit magazines’ capacities failed to clear the US Senate in April 2013.
The National Rifle Association of America and its advocates fiercely opposed the measures.
On December 14, 2012, twenty children and six adults were fatally shot by a gunman — who later killed himself — at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in the town of Newtown in the US state of Connecticut. Earlier in the day, the assailant killed his mother in another location.
There have been reports that the twenty-year-old killer, Adam Lanza, suffered from a personality disorder, was on the antidepressant Prozac, and was fond of first-person shooter games.
Every year, more than 30,000 people are shot and killed in the United States.
The US averages 87 gun deaths each day as a function of gun violence, with an average of 183 injured, according to the University of Chicago Crime Lab and the Centers for Disease Control.
The year 2012 was a record setting year for gun sales in the US.
About 4.5 million firearms are sold annually in the United States at a cost of 2 to 3 billion dollars.
