Nashville shooting: Need comprehensive gun reforms, says city’s Democratic mayor

Even as the police carried out a massive hunt for the gunman who killed four persons and injuring as many at the Waffle House restaurant in Nashville in the state of Tennessee in the wee hours of Sunday, April 22, the city's mayor David Briley sought stricter gun control, reports said.

Briley said in a news conference that people wanted to live in a safe environment where everybody could safely go to work or school, CNN reported.

He said it was his responsibility as the mayor of Nashville to see that people lived up to their greatest potential. He paid condolences over the deaths and said that those who died also deserved a leadership which would rise on the occasion and take action to get the weapons off the streets.

Briley is a Democrat.

Demand for gun control has skyrocketed in the US in the wake of mass massacres over the past several years but yet nothing concrete has come out to curb the menace.

Authorities said a 29-year-old man named Travis Reinking allegedly walked into the eatery in Antioch and opened fire with an "assault-type rifle", killing four.

It was reported that a customer braved the carnage and snatched the rifle from the killer, making the latter flee on foot. The police said the assassin did not have any clothes on his body and that he had come in a car with a number registered in the name of Reinking. The local residents were asked to lock themselves up in their houses as the killer was on the run. The authorities suspected that the gunman was carrying two weapons with him - a hand gun besides a long gun, CNN added.

Briley said in the news conference that comprehensive gun reforms were required to address the issue of shootings and homicides.

Sundays' shooting was the second in Antioch's neighbourhood in the recent months. In September last year, one person was killed while seven were injured in a shooting that happened in a church.