Sikh community calls for gun reforms after Fedex shooting
INDIANAPOLIS : Members of Indianapolis’ tight-knit Sikh community joined with city officials to call for gun reforms as they mourned the deaths of four Sikhs, who were among the eight people killed in a mass shooting at a Fedex warehouse.
At a vigil attended by more than 200 at an Indianapolis park on Saturday evening, Aasees Kaur, who represented the Sikh Coalition, spoke out alongside the city’s mayor and other elected officials to demand action that would prevent such attacks from happening again.
“We must support one another, not just in grief, but in calling our policymakers and elected officials to make meaningful change,” Kaur said. “The time to act is not later, but now. We are far too many tragedies, too late, in doing so.”
Kiran Deol, who attended the vigil in support of family members affected by the shooting, said loopholes in the law that make it easier for individuals to buy guns “need to be closed now,” and emphasised that anyone who tries to buy a firearm should be required to have their background checked.
Satjeet Kaur, the Sikh Coalition’s executive director, said the entire community was traumatised by the “senseless” violence. “While we don’t yet know the motive of the shooter, he targeted a facility known to be heavily populated by Sikh employees,” Kaur said.
The shooting is the deadliest incident of violence collectively in the Sikh community in the U.S. since 2012, when a white supremacist burst into a Sikh temple in Wisconsin and shot 10 people, killing seven.
United Sikhs, a United Nations affiliated human rights and advocacy organisation, has expressed shock over the shooting. “We are in touch with the federal agencies for the safety and security of people at all these community events,” said Manvinder Singh, director of the United Sikhs.
Influential American lawmakers and Sikh community leaders have sought a thorough investigation into the mass shooting at the Fedex facility, according to a PTI report.
Shooter’s family apologises
The family of the 19-year-old mass shooter, Brandon Scott Hole, in Indiana who killed eight people, has apologised to the relatives of the victims, saying they were “devastated” by the actions of their son and that they tried to get him the help he needed.