As the parent of a son who was shot and killed, the way Donald Trump talks so callously about gun violence horrifies me.



Early in the campaign, he said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose any voters. And this week, he suggested that gun violence could be a way to deal with Hillary Clinton because she wants to “essentially abolish the second amendment”.



It’s not as if he shouldn’t know his words incite violence. He recently pointed Katy Tur, who covers Trump for NBC, out to the crowd at a campaign event – and afterwards she had to be escorted out of the event by the secret service for her own safety.



He either doesn’t understand, or he understands and means it. On the one hand, he is incompetent. On the other, he is evil.



Trump is running to be president of the United States. I think we have a right to expect that he speaks clearly and responsibly and the statement he made completely misrepresented secretary Clinton’s position on the second amendment. She wants common sense measures to reduce gun violence, like universal background checks on all gun sales.



More than 70% of gun owners and National Rifle Association members agree in two separate polls that we should have universal background checks. The current state of the law is that you go to a gun store and buy a gun and it’s mandatory that you have a background check. But if you buy a gun online or go to a gun show, depending on who you buy it from, you don’t need a background check.



That makes no sense. It’s like having two separate TSA lines at the airport, and you’re checked in one and you’re not checked in the other. Which one’s the bad guy going to go through?



I don’t mean to speak for everyone, but I’ve traveled around the country, and I’ve met hundreds of survivors of gun violence. Family members. People who’ve lost loved ones.



A young lady who was at a middle school shooting in Jonesboro, Arkansas, in the late 1990s said the students were told to run to the gym. They were running across the lawn and could see bodies on the lawn. They got to the gym. A friend pulled up her shirt, said, “I got shot”. She died.



After the Orlando shooting, I heard the first responders talking about going into Pulse nightclub and hearing cell phones ringing on the floor beside people who had been shot and killed.



That was what happened with my son, Christopher. He had his cell phone. I tried to call him. He was lying dead on the floor of a deli in Isla Vista, California.



He had been gunned down by a mentally ill 22-year-old, who fired out his car window injuring seven people and killing three. One of them was Christopher. The shooter then drove over another seven people, injuring them all. This was after stabbing his two roommates and a guest at his apartment.



When I hear the first responders talk about the cell phones ringing, it’s real to me. I know what those families are going through. It’s agony.



Richard Martinez, left, expresses his anger and sorrow over the attack that killed his son Christopher. Photograph: Michael Nelson/EPA

Since last summer we’ve had the church shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, and a recruiting station shot up in Chattanooga, Tennessee, by a gunman who later killed four marines at another military facility. A reporter was shot and killed live on air in Roanoke, Virginia, and there was a theater shooting in Lafayette, Louisiana.

There was a shooting at a community college in Oregon and one in Colorado Springs at the Planned Parenthood clinic. There was San Bernardino. And then we had the largest mass shooting in modern American history at Orlando.



What’s been done? A lot in the states, but nothing in Congress. Every second, every hour, every day that goes by brings us closer to the next mass shooting.



We’ve used common sense measures to make driving safer, flying safer, buying food safer. There’s just no reason why we can’t use common sense measures to reduce gun violence.



I was 40 when Christopher was born. He was the center of my life. I talk about him every day, I think about him every day. He was kind and generous, but at the same time one of the most competitive people you’d ever meet – in the nicest way. He deserved so much better from life.



For us, his death is the end of the world.

I watch the news, and I see more shootings. If we as a country had done what we should have done after Sandy Hook, there’s a good chance that my son and others would be alive today.



In talking with families, there is no right way or wrong way to respond to grief. But I hate saying that Christopher “was lost”. Christopher was shot and killed. He was murdered.

At this point, Donald Trump should understand his impact on the people he’s talking to. All you have to do is go on Twitter and see that some people took his words seriously in the worst possible way.

He’s completely irresponsible, completely dangerous, unpatriotic and in complete disregard of what this country stands for, our system of government and our values.

As told to Maria L La Ganga

Richard Martinez is the father of Christopher Ross Michaels Martinez, who was shot and killed in a mass attack in Isla Vista, California, in 2014. Richard is an outreach associate with EveryTown for Gun Safety working to reduce gun violence