A gunman killed six people in the southern state of Mississippi on Friday, prompting US President Joe Biden to call again for tighter gun restrictions, just days after he urged Congress to act after the fatal university shooting. According to local media reports, a man shot a man in a shop in the small town of Arcapotla, then went into a neighboring house and killed a woman.
Later, CNN, citing the sheriff of a city of less than 300 people, reported that the woman he killed was his ex-wife.
Police then tracked his car to the home he owned and found the bodies of two other men killed nearby, Sheriff Brad Lance told CNN.
As for the other two dead, they are a man and a woman who were found shot to death in a nearby house, and they are relatives of the shooter who was detained while trying to escape.
“At this point, we believe he acted alone and his motives remain unknown,” Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves tweeted. He called for “praying for the souls of the victims of this tragic act and for their families.”
The investigation is being conducted by the Tate County Sheriff’s Office, where Arcapotla is located, and a branch of the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation.
Despite modest progress on gun control legislation, Joe Biden unsuccessfully urged Congress to restore the 1994-2004 nationwide ban on assault rifles.
But the Democratic president is facing Republicans, who defend the constitutional right to own guns and have had a slim majority in the House of Representatives since January.
According to the Archives of Gun Violence Database, approximately 44,000 people died in gun-related incidents in the United States last year, about half of them from homicide, accidents, and self-defense, and half from the result of suicide.
