Atlanta mayor: 'It's the guns'
Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens released an impassioned letter addressed to city residents on Thursday pleading for change in the wake of Wednesday's mass shooting in a medical center waiting room.
"This suspect was arrested and will stand trial for his crimes," the mayor said. "But that doesn’t change the fact that one woman died, and four others were seriously injured. It doesn’t change the fact that our city experienced a collective trauma. Families are grieving today, and our community is on edge."
"We will learn more in the coming days about the circumstances of this shooting. But one thing we already know is that an incident like this is tragically too common in America," Dickens said. "We need national action to change the way we treat mental health. And we need action that keeps guns out of the hands of people who should not have them."
"We cannot accept mass shootings as normal in our country," he continued. "Other nations have challenges with mental health, but they don’t have this level of gun violence that we do."
"It’s the guns," the mayor stressed. "While we respect the rights conveyed by the 2nd Amendment, we also need more actions to protect the rights of our citizens to go about their lives -- to go to a doctor’s office, a supermarket, a gas station, their school -- without the threat of being gunned down."
