A 57-year-old North Carolina man, Robert Lewis Dear, is the suspected gunman in a shooting at a Planned Parenthood health clinic in Colorado Springs in which three people died and nine were injured.

The Guardian reports:

After he was named, Barack Obama said on Saturday the US had “to do something about the easy accessibility of weapons of war on our streets to people who have no business wielding them”. […]

Early reports portrayed Dear as a loner who lived in a rural cabin and did not noticeably discuss issues such as religion or abortion. Motive therefore remained unclear in the attack, which police said on Friday was carried out with a “long gun” – usually a reference to a rifle or shotgun. […]

Planned Parenthood has […] been at the centre of a fierce political storm – as fierce as that over the gun control measures for which Obama continues to call – over videos released by an anti-abortion group which purport to show officials discussing the sale of foetal tissue. Calls to defund the organisation have proliferated among Republicans in Congress and on the 2016 presidential campaign trail.

Read more here.

— Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.

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