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Interview: Richard Martinez

Lucy Nicholson/Reuters

It's been nearly a month since the mass shooting in Isla Vista that left seven dead, including the killer. Richard Martinez, whose son Christopher Martinez was killed, has been speaking out since the incident, to put a stop to mass shootings. 

  "He was very active in sports and academics. His life touched a lot of people. He's really going to be missed. He was a great kid," Richard Martinez said.

  Martinez says that if he doesn't talk about Chris, Isla Vista will be just be another case about the killer. He says media coverage of many of the past school shootings have neglected to highlight the victims, showing photos of the killers. The families affected are not discussed as much.

After the shooting, Martinez took a leave of absence from his job to try to initiate some change.

"I'm going to be going to Washington DC on Monday to meet with some people that have been involved in this effort for far longer than I have," Martinez said. " I've been making efforts, with the team that I have,  to try to understand how we can do better."

Since his speech at the UCSB Memorial, where he urged everyone there to send postcards to politicians and use the hashtag "Not One More" to grab the attention of lawmakers, the hashtags are in the millions. He describes the support as "overwhelming."  They're all over social media with messages to stop gun violence in the United States.

"I was watching a piece on [The Daily Show with] Jon Stewart for June 11th and he pointed out on that show, that since Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT, 26 kids and teachers died that day. Jon Stewart was saying there have been 74 school shootings since that day," Martinez said. "Politicians.  If they can't be moved to act after all those little kids died at Sandy Hook, it's absurd."

Martinez said the recent bills proposed to address gun violence are not enough because the problem is too multifaceted. While there is commonality, between many of these shootings, there are differences in all the cases. He says, the approach needs to be comprehensive, addressing the differences like mental health, gun violence and violence against women, or it wont work.

"If the President's original bill was best approach, then we should go back to do that, and try to get that passed because more kids are going to die. It really is a matter of life and death," Martinez said.

Martinez said he thinks President Obama genuinely shares his sentiment to create change because he is a parent. 

"He's got two girls that are going to go off to college. I can't believe he's not concerned. I think he is, but what parent can really feel safe? You can't feel safe and it's needless," Martinez said. "We're a can-do country. We've prided ourselves as Americans fixing problems. There are solutions here, it just takes a political will to do them. It wasn't like this when I was growing up. So why can't we fix this? We can't fix it because the leaders in this country just haven't done enough."

In addition to his many efforts to make a change, Martinez is working with Peter Rodger, the killer's father. Photos of their meeting this month were released earlier this week. Martinez said he wanted to meet with Rodger because in his early career he worked with families who were affected by mental illness. He said he could see what the Rodger family was struggling with.

"Furthermore, I had heard that Mr. Rodger and his family had said that they were committed to doing whatever they could to stop these kinds of things from happening. So, with those two things, I reached out and made contact. We have a plan to work together," Martinez said. 

Martinez makes his message clear that something needs to change, because he says that things have not always been this way.

"How have we gotten to a point, where the asserted right to have a gun outweighs the right of a child to feel safe and secure?" Martinez said.