Ajit Karn
Washington: Six people were killed by a shooter on Friday in the southern US state of Mississippi, leading President Joe Biden to reiterate his appeal for stricter gun laws just days after making a similar plea in the wake of a deadly campus shooting.
Local media said that police in Mississippi claimed a guy shot and killed a person at a business in the small hamlet of Arkabutla before killing a lady at a residence nearby.
Later, CNN revealed that the lady was his ex-wife, citing the county sheriff.
Next, according to Sheriff Brad Lance of CNN, police followed his car to a house that was subsequently confirmed to belong to the suspect and discovered the bodies of two additional men inside.
The fifth and sixth victims, a man and a woman, were discovered shot to death at a nearby home and may have been linked to the suspect, who was apprehended as he tried to leave, according to Lance.
In a Facebook post, the Tate County Sheriff’s Office named the suspected gunman as 52-year-old Richard Dale Crum and stated that he was in arrest and facing first-degree murder charges.
Tate Reeves, the governor of Mississippi, tweeted that he had been briefed on the situation.
“We now think he acted alone. His motivation is unclear, “Reeves stated.
Please offer prayers right now for the victims of this awful incident and their families.
The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation and the sheriff of Tate County, where Arkabutla is situated, took on the investigation.
— “Enough”
The fatal shooting on Friday happened just a few days after a man stormed a university campus in the northern state of Michigan, murdering three people while doing so.
In a message made public late on Friday, Biden reiterated his irate reaction from the Michigan tragedy by saying, “Enough.”
“At least 73 mass shootings have occurred in our country so far this year, 48 days in. Prayers and thoughts alone won’t be enough. Congress has to act immediately because gun violence is on the rise “added Biden.
In less than a week last month, there were also two fatal mass shootings in California that involved Asian Americans.
Biden stated Friday night that “common sense gun regulation improvements are absolutely necessary.”
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Republicans, who are fierce champions of the constitutional right to carry guns and who hold a slim majority in the House of Representatives since January, have opposed his demands for Congress to reinstate the national assault rifle ban that was in place from 1994 to 2004.
According to the Gun Violence Archive database, there were an estimated 44,000 gun-related fatalities in the United States last year, with half of them being suicides and the other half occurring in homicide, accidents, and self-defense.
