ROANOKE, Aug 28 : The brazen killing of two US journalists during a live television broadcast by a former reporter fired by the station reignited calls on Thursday for tougher gun control in America -- though there was little hope for change.
Mass shootings in the United States -- from the 2012 school massacre in Newtown to June's slaying of black churchgoers in Charleston -- regularly prompt widespread hand-wringing about easy US access to guns, and a need for action. The killings on Wednesday of reporter Alison Parker, 24, and cameraman Adam Ward, 27, as they conducted an early morning on-air interview for WDBJ -- a CBS affiliate in Roanoke, Virginia -- were no different.
"How many massacres do we have to have... before the public cries out and says what it is that they want us to do?" Roanoke Mayor David Bowers said on CNN. "We just haven't reached a consensus on this in America."
Parker's father Andy made an impassioned plea for change, saying his daughter's death had left him heartbroken. "I'm for the Second Amendment, but there has to be a way to force politicians that are cowards and in the pockets of the NRA to come to grips and make sense -- have sensible laws so that crazy people can't get guns," he said. ?AFP