Father of slain reporter vows to be ‘absolutely relentless’ in push for gun control (578 hits)
The father of slain Virginia journalist Alison Parker says he “will not stop” until the United States introduces stricter rules on who can purchase a gun.
Speaking to CP24’s Nathan Downer Thursday, Andy Parker said while the grief he feels over the loss of his daughter has “crushed” his soul, he is on a mission to push for tighter gun control in the country.
“How many Sandy Hooks and how many more theatre shootings and how many more Alison and Adam cold-blooded murders are we going to have before people start saying look we have to have some way to control this,” he said during a telephone interview Thursday afternoon.
“And I’m not advocating going door-to-door and taking people’s guns away but we’ve got to have common sense background checks on people who are mentally disturbed.”
Virginia TV reporter Alison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward were shot to death on live television on Wednesday morning by a disgruntled former employee of WDBJ, the station where the two victims worked. Hours after the shooting, the suspected gunman, Vester Lee Flanagan, died in hospital after sustaining a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Parker’s father described his 24-year-old daughter as “one of those remarkable, bright shining stars.”
“I go from being numb from to being in denial to just abject crying my eyes out for my loss. Like any father, no one should have to bury a child,” he said.
“When she walked into a room, It would just light up and people just loved her… I couldn’t go to the grocery store without somebody saying, ‘Boy we really like watching Alison in the morning.’”
Parker said he hopes members of the media will help him keep his daughter’s tragedy in the headlines.
“The governor of Virginia called me yesterday and I told him exactly what I was going to do. I said, ‘If I have to be the John Walsh of gun control and to stop this, then that it what I am going to,” he said.
“I am going to be absolutely relentless, I won’t stop. I will not let this story die like it normally does where you have a tragedy like this.”
