‘Mass shootings have diminished my love for America’

BBC News presenter Clive Myrie said his feelings towards the United States, where he has been reporting for years, have been affected by covering “so many mass shootings”.

“Mass shootings have completely destroyed my love for this place,” Myrie told an audience at the Hay Festival on Saturday.

But he added that it’s “still a place I love on so many levels.”

Mery, who also hosts Mastermind, was the BBC’s Washington correspondent and covered the administrations of Presidents Bill Clinton, George Bush and Barack Obama.

He said that Obama only cried in public two or three times during his term in office, two of which were during his term in office. Sandy Hook MassacreIn 2012, 26 people were murdered at a Connecticut elementary school.

Myrie added that after the tragedy, Obama tried to “persuade Congress to enact meaningful gun control,” but “he failed to do so.” Because of the power of the National Rifle Association (NRA)”.

“The most powerful man on earth…can’t change this single dial, he can’t do it,” Myrie said.

He added that he had previously associated gun culture with the country’s hunting history and its “Wild West culture.”

“But it’s not about that. It’s about being able to confront the government and the weapons that do that…I realize that January 6 With the uprising.

“That’s why they want guns. It’s horrible. This idea of… a frontier culture… it’s not that.

Mr Obama told the BBC in 2015 His lack of progress in passing such laws is “one of the areas where I feel most frustrated and stymied.”

As political and legal debate over gun control continuesDemocrats point out that among industrialized countries, the United States is the only country with serious gun violence.

Republicans counter that the U.S. Constitution enshrines the right to own guns and that new gun control legislation would be counterproductive.

During the wide-ranging discussion before Hay’s packed audience, Myrie also discussed racism, multiculturalism and his journalism career, which is the focus of his memoir, “Everything Is Everything.”

He explained that his parents came to Bolton from Jamaica as part of the Windrush generation and his uncle Clive already lived there.

Myri said his father “never adapted,” but they still “managed to make lemonade out of lemons.”

His father worked in a car battery factory, while his mother was a Jamaican-trained teacher who later became Mary Quant’s seamstress.

Their efforts paid off and they not only bought their own home, but also the one next door.

“The motherland calls us: ‘Help us rebuild[post-war Britain],'” Myrie explains.

“What they get in return is a lot of racism and a lot of pain.”

He said his parents wanted him to pursue a traditional career while Myri went on to study law. However, he always harbored a desire to become a journalist after growing up watching Wick and shows from broadcasters such as Sir Trevor Macdonald and Kate Addy.

Myrie was called to the pub but chose to join the BBC trainee scheme.

“It was only after I started Mastermind that I got my parents’ forgiveness,” he joked.

He also said he refused to be pigeonholed for covering events such as the Notting Hill Carnival earlier in his career.

Myrie said he told editors: “I don’t want to be seen as a black reporter, I want to be a reporter who happens to be black.”

Lately, he added, “I’ve been the first person to put my hand up to cover the death of George Floyd, or police brutality, or Nelson Mandela’s funeral. But that’s my choice.