PERSON: Richard Martinez

Richard Martinez, a gun control advocate who lost his son to a shooting in Santa Barbara in 2014, told the audience attending TheWrap’s GrillChat on Thursday that no one can truly know what it’s like to be affected by gun violence until it happens to them.
“My closest friends now are other survivors, because no one really knows what its like except other survivors,” he said. “You know it’s bad, but until you’ve lived it, you don’t really know. It takes you down into a place you’ve never been before.”
Martinez, a senior associate for gun control organization Everytown for Gun Safety, described the pain and fear he experienced when he was trying to get information on the wherabouts of his own son, Christopher Ross Michaels-Martinez, who was one of six UCSB students to be killed in a rampage by 22-year-old Elliot Rodger in what has become known as the Isla Vista shootings.

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