Horror novelist Stephen King weighed in on the Charleston church shooting on Twitter Thursday, echoing similar statements made by President Obama, who urged the need for stricter gun control.
“Until responsible gun owners support responsible gun control laws, innocent blood will continue to flow. How many times must we see this?” Mr. King, who has openly supported banning semiautomatic weapons, tweeted to his 743,000 followers Thursday evening.
“Too many closed minds on gun control. Worse, far too many PROUDLY closed minds. Meanwhile, the American shooting gallery remains open,” he wrote. “According to Bloomberg Business, gun deaths will exceed traffic fatalities in America this year. Can’t put a seatbelt on a semi-automatic.”
Mr. King has been an outspoken supporter of stricter gun laws following the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. In 2013, he wrote an essay, titled “Guns,” which called for gun owners to support a ban on automatic and semiautomatic weapons.
“Autos and semi-autos are weapons of mass destruction. When lunatics want to make war on the unarmed and unprepared, these are the weapons they use,” he wrote at the time.
President Obama on Thursday called the nine deaths at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, “senseless murders” and suggested more gun control is needed in the wake of the tragedy.
“We do know that once again, innocent people were killed in part because someone who wanted to inflict harm had no trouble getting their hands on a gun,” he said. “At some point, we as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this kind of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries. It doesn’t happen in other places with this kind of frequency. It is in our power to do something about it.”
• Jessica Chasmar can be reached at jchasmar@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.