Colorado Shooting Victim Would Be ‘Deeply Offended’ If Death Led To Gun Control

The father of Boulder, Colorado, shooting victim Eric Talley doesn’t believe his son would want his violent death to be used to promote gun control.

Talley, who was a Boulder Police Department Officer, was one of the 10 victims killed Monday by gunman Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa at a King Soopers supermarket.

Talley's father, Homer Talley, told TMZ that his son was a gun-rights advocate who owned an AR-15, one of the guns that police recovered from Alissa.

Following the grocery store shooting, Homer Talley noticed more discussions about stricter gun laws and banning certain weapons.

“My son would have been deeply offended to know his death would be used to promote gun control. Before he was an officer, he enjoyed shooting,” Homer Talley said.

Although he called the grocery store shooting “a senseless act,” Homer Talley doesn’t believe stricter gun laws would have saved his son.

“Just because some wacko goes around shooting people doesn’t mean guns need to be taken away. You can’t take away enough guns to protect this country,” he said.

While Homer Talley agrees with some gun laws, he claimed, “to take away that freedom completely is something I am against, and my son was against.”

Meanwhile, Radovan Petrovic, the reverend at the church attended by the family of shooting victim Neven Stanisic, told the Denver Post he hoped the tragedy would result in more attention on mental health.

“These things that happen here in this country, unfortunately, it’s a specific phenomenon. I, as a priest, only can note that people in charge definitely need to pay attention to people needing mental health [treatment] so that these things don’t continue to happen.”

While Alissa's family claimed he suffered from “mental illness,” experts told USA Today that such conditions can’t be blamed for his behavior.

“There’s no psychotic illness whose symptom is shooting other people,” said Dr. Jonathan Metzl, the director of the Center for Medicine, Health and Society at Vanderbilt University.

Angela Kimball of the National Alliance on Mental Illness added, “People are searching for explanations for behavior they don’t understand. It’s easy to put a label like mental illness on behavior that frankly seems just beyond the pale.”

Alissa faces 10 charges of murder in the first degree and an attempted murder charge. He is scheduled for a court appearance on Thursday morning but can waive his right to appear.