KISS rhythm guitarist and co-lead vocalist, Paul Stanley, on Sunday called for stricter gun control measures after a mass shooting left at least seven dead and 22 others injured in West Texas this weekend.
“We don’t have more ‘crazy’ or ‘mentally unstable’ people in the US,” Stanley tweeted on Sunday afternoon. “What we DO have are commonplace mass shootings with automatic and semi-automatic high powered firearms. THAT cannot be disputed. Tell me what we and our government must do.”
He added: “Prayers and sympathy are not enough.”
Stanley’s remarks comes just hours after a mass shooting left at least seven dead and 22 others injured between Odessa and Midland in West Texas on Saturday. A 17-month-old girl, Anderson Davis, became one of the victims injured after she suffered shrapnel impact to her right chest as well as a gunshot wound through her bottom lip, according to NBC News. Davis is currently being treated at a Lubbock hospital and is in satisfactory condition, according to Eric Finley, marketing director of Texas’ UMC Health System.
“We praise God for walking beside us during this time and our prayers go out to all of the families that are walking this same walk,” Anderson’s parents said in response to the incident. “We hurt so badly for the families whose loved ones didn’t survive this tragedy.”
The mass shooting began at around 3:15 p.m. local time on Saturday after the gunman was pulled over for a traffic stop between Midland and Odessa, according to officials. The suspect shot the official who stopped him and headed west towards Odessa while shooting other victims. Later, the gunman deserted his vehicle and hijacked a U.S. Postal Service van. He was eventually killed during a shootout with authorities near a Cinergy movie theatre.
Former Texas congressman and 2020 presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke dropped the f-bomb live on television while discussing the epidemic of U.S. gun violence in an interview on CNN’s State of the Union earlier today.
In response to the shooting, O’Rourke demanded Capitol Hill politicians enact stricter gun control laws rather than offer “thoughts and prayers.”
“The rhetoric that we’ve used, the ‘thoughts and prayers’ that you’d just referred to, it has done nothing to stop the epidemic of gun violence,” O’Rourke said. “To protect our kids, our families, our fellow Americans in public places. At a Walmart in El Paso where 22 were killed. In Sutherland Springs, in a church. One or two a day all over this country. A hundred killed daily in the United States of America. We’re averaging about 300 mass shootings a year. No other country comes close.”
“So yes, this is f***ed up,” the former congressman added. “If we don’t call it out for what it is, if we’re not able to speak clearly, if we’re not able to act decisively, then we will continue to have this kind of bloodshed in America.”
