The father of the police officer who was shot and killed during the Boulder, Colorado, mass shooting said his son would be “deeply offended” to see his death be used to push for gun control measures.
“My son would have been deeply offended to know his death would be used to promote gun control. Before he was an officer, he enjoyed shooting,” Homer Talley told TMZ of his son, Eric Talley.
“Just because some wacko goes around shooting people doesn’t mean guns need to be taken away. You can’t take away enough guns to protect this country,” he added.
The elder Talley said he supports commonsense gun laws, “but to take away that freedom completely is something I am against and my son was against.”
Eric Talley, an 11-year veteran of the Boulder Police Department, died Monday when a shooter opened fire inside a King Soopers grocery store in Boulder. Ten people, including Talley, were killed in the shooting.
Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, who emigrated from Raqqa, Syria, in the early 2000s, was charged with 10 counts of first-degree murder on Tuesday.
Homer Talley called the attack “a senseless act, and that is just it. The situation [Eric] found himself in wasn’t one that the government could protect him from.”
The shooting has sparked renewed calls among Democrats for gun control legislation, including from President Joe Biden on Tuesday.
“I don’t need to wait another minute, let alone an hour, to take commonsense steps that will save lives in the future,” he said.
“It should not be a partisan issue. This is an American issue,” he said. “It will save lives, American lives. We have to act.”
Vice President Kamala Harris joined CBS This Morning on Wednesday and suggested that the White House won’t use executive action to reform gun laws.
“We should first expect the U.S. Congress to act,” Harris said.
Some Republicans, however, have shut down talk of gun control, with Sen. Ted Cruz accusing Democrats of taking part in “ridiculous theater.”
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“Every time there’s a shooting, we play this ridiculous theater where this committee gets together and proposes a bunch of laws that would do nothing to stop these murders,” Cruz said on Tuesday during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.
“What happens in this committee after every mass shooting is Democrats propose taking away guns from law-abiding citizens because that’s their political objective,” Cruz added. “But what they propose, not only does it not reduce crime, it makes it worse.”
