Guilford Dad on 2 More Mass Shootings: "Tipping Point is Coming"

GUILFORD, CT - Two mass shootings this weekend may have happened thousands of miles away but a Guilford family who have been touched by a different type of gun tragedy said Sunday a "tipping point is coming."

Mike Song, father of Ethan Song, whose son was tragically killed by a self-inflicted gun shot in January of 2018 at age 15, said what he and his family have seen this weekend has just further strengthened their resolve to pass tougher gun control regulations in the country.

That resolve has been successful in Connecticut - where Mike and his wife Kristin successfully lobbied the state Senate and House and the governor to sign tougher gun storage - or “Ethan’s Law” - legislation.

The legislation, the Songs believe, may have saved their son's life - and hopefully, they believe will save many others now that it is law in Connecticut and they hope soon will be law across the country.

As far as the shootings that took at least 29 lives in two seperate shootings in Texas and California who this weekend, the Songs aren’t trying to compare the terrible tragedies to the incident that happened to Ethan.

However, Mike Song, said making access to guns more difficult is a common sense overall strategy that all, including Second Amendment supporters, should get behind.

Mike Song had this to say:

"Gun violence kills 40,000 per year. But really, it kills about 4 million because there are 100 people who deeply loved each victim - like a child, a spouse, a parent, uncle, aunt, each victim.

"Like a child, spouse, parent, uncle, aunt, nephew, friend, teacher - they die too. A part of them."

Asked to elaborate on his feelings, Mike Song said: "Everytime something like this happens it triggers some pretty bad memories for our whole family. We may not know everything there is to know about guns and the law but we do know about the pain these people are experiencing.

"And it's an agony that should never happen to anyone. And everyone especially the makers of the products that are causing this pain should be all in for reducing gun violence," Mike Song said.

Further illustrating the horrific weekend events are being felt here in Connecticut, on Monday morning, Governor Ned Lamont and members of Connecticut’s Congressional delegation, including U.S. Senators Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy, will hold a rally on the north steps of the State Capitol building in Hartford urging the federal government to take strong action on gun violence prevention measures.

Blumenthal and Murphy have been trying for years to get their colleagues in Washington to pass tougher gun control legislation. Their efforts have, so far, fallen on deaf ears.

Also participating in Monday’s Hartford event will be state legislators, representatives of several local gun violence prevention organizations, and other advocates.

Back in El Paso, police arrested the suspected killer of 20 people at a Walmart, a 21-year-old white man from a suburb of Dallas, more than 650 miles away, El Paso Police Chief Greg Allen said.

Gov. Greg Abbott said the case will be prosecuted "as both a capital murder but also as a hate crime." Police said they believe the gunman wrote a manifesto online that espouses white nationalist and racist views.

The FBI opened a domestic terrorism investigation into the shooting, according to a source familiar with the investigative process.

Within 13 hours of the El Paso shooting, another nine people were killed in Ohio. Police in Dayton said 16 people were injured in the incident and the suspect is dead.

The shooting took place around 1 a.m. outside on East 5th Street in the city's Oregon district, a popular downtown area, Dayton Deputy Director and Assistant Chief of the Police Lt. Col. Matt Carper told reporters early Sunday.

The suspect, who was shot and killed by responding officers, has not yet been identified, but Carper said the subject fired a "long gun" with multiple rounds.

The shooter wore body armor.

U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, who along with fellow U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal and Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro have been working with the Songs to try and pass a federal recognized "Ethan's Law" similar to the one passed in Connecticut, had this to say about the weekend's horrific events.

“Nowhere but in the United States does this epidemic rate of mass murder occur. My heart goes out to all the victims of gun violence this weekend - in El Paso and Dayton, but also Baton Rouge, Colorado Springs, and New York. What is so heartbreaking is that almost all of this carnage is preventable," Murphy said. "Good laws stop bad people from doing horrible things. But many of my colleagues in Congress think that their jobs require them only to express words of sympathy and concern,”said Murphy.

Murphy continued, “Why run for Congress if you aren't prepared to pass laws that make people safer? Why go through all the trouble of being elected to federal office if you throw your hands up and let evil win? These shooters, contemplating mass slaughter, take note of their government's inaction, and they infer this silence as endorsement. For every national leader who wakes up Monday, and decides to do nothing – again – just know that the blood is soaking deeper into your hands. Maybe we cannot fix the entire gun violence epidemic – which took dozens of other lives this weekend, in homicides, suicides, and accidental shootings – overnight, but why don't we at least try to start. Why sign up for public office if you aren't going to at least try?”