During a moving speech at a eulogy for the head New York state attorney who was killed by a stray bullet earlier this month, Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Saturday renewed his call for national gun control laws, Reuters reports.
He spoke during a private service for Carey Gabay, 43, at Emmanuel Baptist Church in New York City's Brooklyn borough. Gabay, believed to have been an unintended target, was shot in the head at an early-morning celebration Sept. 7 before the annual West Indian Day parade. He was pronounced dead on Sept. 16 after he was removed from a respirator, notes the report.
"His death was one of the most tragic, pointless examples of the rampant violence that is spreading like a cancer through our society, especially in our poorer communities and especially in our communities of color," Cuomo said, according to the news service.
To underscore his point that state laws are ineffective against gun violence, Cuomo recalled the mass shooting this summer at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., and another in 2012 at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn.
"It's not enough for New York State to pass a gun law and close the front door when the guns are coming in the back door, when the guns can come up from Virginia or South Carolina for anyone willing to take a car ride," he said, writes Reuters.
Gabay, a Harvard-trained lawyer who was raised in public housing in the Bronx, N.Y., by Jamaican immigrant parents, began working for Cuomo in 2011 as an assistant counsel.
A police spokeswoman told Reuters Saturday that no arrests have been made in the case.
Read more at the Huffington Post.