Joshua Roberts/Pool via AP
- Sen. Raphael Warnock responded to the shootings in Atlanta where a white gunman killed eight people.
- "We need reasonable gun reform in our country," Warnock said on NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday.
- "We know hate when we see it," the Georgia senator said about the shooting that left six Asian women dead.
- See more stories on Insider's business page.
Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia said the US needed "reasonable gun reform in our country" in response to the Atlanta-area shootings that left eight people dead.
"We need reasonable gun reform in our country," Warnock said on NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday. "This shooter was able to kill all of these folks the same day he purchased a firearm. But right now, what is our legislature doing? They're busy under the gold dome in Georgia trying to prevent people from being able to vote the same day they register."
He continued: "When you can buy a gun and create this much carnage and violence on the same day, but if you want to exercise your right to vote as an American citizen… the same legislature that should be focused on this, is busy erecting barriers to that constitutional right."
-Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) March 21, 2021
Last week, a white gunman, 21-year-old white man, Robert Aaron Long, was arrested and charged for shootings at spas in the Atlanta-area earlier this week. Six of eight people who died during the attack were women of Asian descent.
"We all know hate when we see it. It is tragic that we've been visited with this kind of violence yet again," Warnock said in the interview. "I'm going to do everything in my power as a United States Senator to make sure that families don't have to endure this kind of violence in the first place."
Long told law enforcement that he had a "sex addiction" and that the attack was not racially motivated, however, advocates are pushing back against that claim. The shootings came amid a rise in hate against the Asian American community during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Warnock, along with Sen. Jon Ossoff and state Rep. Bee Nguyen attended a rally on Saturday condemning hate crimes against the Asian American community, the Associated Press reported.
"I just wanted to drop by to say to my Asian sisters and brothers, we see you, and, more importantly, we are going to stand with you," Warnock said during the rally, according to the AP.