Saying “we are all to blame” for the death of his 20-year-old son, Martinez urged the public join him in demanding “immediate action” from members of Congress and President Obama to curb gun violence by passing stricter gun-control laws.
“Today, I’m going to ask every person I can find to send a postcard to every politician they can think of with three words on it: Not one more,” he said Tuesday morning. “People are looking for something to do. I’m asking people to stand up for something. Enough is enough.”
Martinez, 60, who works as a criminal defense lawyer, vaulted into the spotlight on Saturday when he crashed a Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department news conference where deputies were spelling out the grim details of the knifing and shooting attacks by Elliot Rodger, who killed six people and ended with the 22-year-old assailant shooting himself.
After the news conference, Martinez told reporters to train their cameras on him as he delivered a biting, 80-second speech attacking “craven” politicians and the National Rifle Association.
On Monday, Martinez checked into a hotel near the University of California at Santa Barbara campus, preparing to meet with other victims’ parents who were gathering before a Tuesday afternoon memorial service planned at the college for their children. Michaels-Martinez, like the five other victims, was a student there. An English major from Los Osos, Calif., he planned to go to London next year and to law school after graduation, according to his father.
In a hotel lobby, guests recognized Martinez and repeatedly told him they agreed with what he said at the news conference. They also offered condolences.
While Martinez said he is angered by the public’s willingness to accept mass murder as a way of life in America, he said he is not mad at Elliot Rodger’s parents.
“As bad as I feel about this, at least people come up to me and say, ‘I’m so sorry for you,’ ” he said. “Who will say that to them? No one is going to say that.”
Martinez said he hopes to meet with Rodger’s father, Peter Rodger, a Hollywood director and photographer, and enlist him in his fight to change gun laws. Peter Rodger and his attorney did not respond to a request for interviews.
“I’ve been told that the shooter’s father has said he wanted to devote his life to making sure that doesn’t happen again. I share that with him,” Martinez said. “He’s a father. I’m a father. He loved his son. I love my son. His son died. My son died.”
Martinez also said he is not angry with either the mental health system or the sheriff’s deputies, who in April visited Elliot Rodger’s apartment after his family notified them, concerned about dark, brooding videos he had posted on YouTube.
The videos didn’t threaten violence, however, and Rodger was able to convince the deputies that he was depressed but neither suicidal nor homicidal, so they did not search his apartment ,where he had already stockpiled an arsenal of weapons, including three semiautomatic handguns.
Martinez said that as a criminal defense lawyer he has seen the system from the inside and knows how difficult it is for parents to get help for their adult children when they are mentally ill.
He said he also recognizes that police have too few powers to intervene since the mentally ill cannot be involuntarily committed unless they prove to be an immediate threat to themselves or others.
“They don’t have the tools they need,” he said. “I don’t have the answers, but we should ask them what they need and we should give it to them. It’s a lack of will to find solutions. That’s what I’m upset about. This is a problem that can be solved.”
Martinez reserved his anger for the NRA, saying he has no understanding for the group’s position on automatic and semiautomatic weapons after a series of mass murders involving such weapons.
“I’m angry with the leadership of the NRA who always want to characterize this as if it’s a lone madman. That it’s an act of nature we have to tolerate,” he said. “I am angered by how they have worked to normalize this.”
The NRA did not respond to requests for comment.
Gun-control groups have quickly embraced Martinez.
Within hours of Martinez’s impromptu news conference Saturday, the president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence posted a statement on the organization’s Web site: “We at the Brady Campaign stand with Mr. Martinez. He got it exactly right. Americans are dying every day because of the corporate gun lobby and the politicians it has in its pocket.”
Martinez grew up around guns. As a child, he owned a BB gun that he used to kill birds from the fruit trees in his parents’ yard. His father, aunts and uncles hunted deer. From 1974 to 1976, he was a military police officer in the U.S. Army.
He said his son — whom he described as “brave,” “competitive” and “extremely kind” — was also interested in guns but did not own any. He played paintball, expressed a desire to go to a shooting range and thought about following in his footsteps of his father by enlisting in the Army before college.
“He was very physically adventurous,” Martinez said. “He loved to argue. That’s probably why he wanted to become a lawyer, like his parents.” Christopher’s mother, Caryn Johnson Michaels, is a deputy district attorney in San Luis Obispo. (The couple separated when Christopher was young.)
Martinez said his training and that of Christopher’s mother explains, in part, why he has not retreated as most parents do immediately after such a tragedy. “We are tough people,” he said. “Caryn was in charge of the sex crime unit. We fight.”
Martinez said he is consulting with experts to help develop a clear message and a specific course of action that the public can undertake with the aim of preventing similar tragedies in the future.
“There’s no playbook for this. We don’t know what we are doing,” he said. “I just know I have to keep fighting until something changes. The most precious thing in the world has been taken from me. What else can I do?”
Alice Crites and Julie Tate in Washington contributed to this report.
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