Activist and professor Cornel West told Carol Costello on Thursday’s “CNN Newsroom” that a lack of love is behind the murder of reporter Alison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward, although murderer Vester Flanagan, aka “Bryce Williams,” wrote in his manifesto that he wanted a “race war.”

Instead of answering Costello’s question if “race played a factor,” West instead used love as the reasoning, saying, “When you have a love deficit, you have a justice deficit” and that he is “very much in favor of tight gun control.”

“The fundamental question is how do you get at this spiritual decay and this moral decadence in this society as a whole? All of us have to deal with rage. How do you filter that rage through love?”

“The problem is we live in a society where people don’t give or get enough love,” West added. “They don’t give or get enough justice. They don’t give or get enough community. When you’re isolated and insulated, that rage bubbles up.”

“Justice is what love looks like in public. When you have a love deficit, you have a justice deficit. And the question becomes, how do you make things accountable? I‘m very much in favor of tight gun control,” he continued.

(h/t Mediaite)