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CHARLOTTE, N.C. — As a kid in New Zealand, Jack Salt can recall being aware of news reports of the frequent incidents of mass shootings and gun violence in the United States. It wasn’t until Salt, now a fifth-year senior basketball player at the University of Virginia, came to this country for college that he truly grasped the breadth of the problem.

“You’d hear about it on the news when I was back in New Zealand, but just coming over here and just seeing, monthly, something so sad, it’s pretty tough to see that go on,” Salt said Friday after UVA’s loss to Florida State in the ACC tournament semifinals. “And tough to see it in my home country.”

Friday, Salt’s native country was rocked by a mass shooting after a 28-year-old white nationalist allegedly shot and killed 49 people at a pair of mosques in Christchurch. The shooter reportedly sent a racist manifesto to the country’s prime minister, multiple news outlets and posted it online. He then livestreamed the murders on Facebook.

According to the prime minister’s office, the gunman had five firearms, including two semiautomatic weapons, during his assault on the two mosques, the Al Noor mosque and the Linwood mosque, which are 3 miles apart in the center of the city.