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Mayor Kirk Caldwell has requested that Honolulu Hale be illuminated in white through Sunday evening out of respect for the victims of the mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, on Saturday and Dayton, Ohio, on Sunday.
“We have illuminated Honolulu Hale far too often after mass shootings, and although this gesture demonstrates our aloha for the victims and loved ones of these terrible and evil acts, it’s time to turn our frustration into action and further enhance background checks for the purchase of firearms,” said Caldwell in a news release. “The good news here in Hawaii is that we already lead the way in this area by having common-sense gun legislation in place. We also need to put an end to the coarseness in our current political debate and realize that racist language, hateful words and divisive rhetoric do in fact have consequences, as we saw tragically in El Paso and Dayton.”
A total of 31 people were killed and dozens injured in the shootings in a Wal-Mart in El Paso and at a bar in Dayton over the weekend.
Caldwell signed a letter from the U.S. Conference of Mayors to the U.S. Senate calling for immediate action on bipartisan gun safety legislation that has previously passed the U.S. House of Representatives.
So far this year, the letter said, there have been over 250 mass shootings in the nation, and the tragic events in El Paso and Dayton over the weekend “are just the latest reminders that our nation can no longer wait for our federal government to take the actions necessary to prevent people who should not have access to firearms from being able to purchase them.”
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