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After yet another incident of a mass shooting in the US, tennis legend Martina Navratilova has appealed to parents to vote out the "gun-toting" politicians in the country.
On Monday, February 13, 43-year-old Anthony McRae opened fire on the campus of Michigan State University, killing three students and severely injuring five others. He was later found dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Jacquelyn Matthews, a college senior at MSU, was present inside the campus when the shooter started firing and had to relive an old experience from 2012. She was at Connecticut's Sandy Hook Elementary School with her classmates 11 years ago when a 20-year-old shooter killed six adults and 20 children.
Horrified by the latest shooting, Matthews posted a video on social media, saying:
“I am 21 years old, and this is the second mass shooting that I have now lived through," she said. "My heart goes out to all the families and friends of the victims of this Michigan State shooting, but we can no longer just provide love and prayers. There needs to be legislation. There needs to be action. It’s not OK. We can no longer allow this to happen. We can no longer be complacent.”
Reacting to a report carrying the details of Matthews' video, former World No. 1 Navratilova remarked that since the "kids" cannot vote, their parents need to understand their pain and vote out the "gun-toting" politicians.
"Parents need to start voting these asswipe gun toting politicians out since most of the kids can’t vote yet," Navratilova tweeted.
Martina Navratilova has spoken against gun violence earlier as well
In November 2022, a study published in the JAMA Network Open revealed that between 1990 and 2021, a total of 1,110,421 people were killed in gun violence incidents in the US. Although the number came down to 10 firearm deaths for every 100,000 people in 2004, it started rising and reached 14.7 deaths per 100,000 people by 2021, a 45.5% increase.
At the time, Martina Navratilova had taken a sarcastic dig at these numbers, saying:
"Wow… we are definitely the world's leader in this awful category," Martina Navratilova tweeted.
The research further stated that the number of gun-related deaths increased significantly after the outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020 and that 2022 was the third consecutive year that saw over 600 multiple-victim shootings in the US.
