U.S. Marine Dakota Meyer, who received the Medal of Honor in 2011 for his service in Afghanistan, called for "a full institution of the 2nd Amendment" following the attacks on two Chattanooga, Tennessee military centers in a Facebook post Thursday.
"I carry a firearm with me at all times legally under the conceal and carry laws in the area that I am in," Meyer wrote in the social media post. "I do not call for a disarming of American but instead a full institution of the Second Amendment so that we may defend ourselves as a country from all threats, both foreign and domestic."
The Marine said that gun control is not the answer to such attacks, slamming "special interest groups" for spreading gun control "propaganda" throughout the country.
"Now is not the time to come out waiving photos of bullet holes in the glass calling for more gun control and spinning the story to yield a further separation of peoples in the Unites States," Meyer wrote. "Now is the time to call on the American people to ignore the propaganda that special interest groups have been shoving in our faces and unite as a country so that we may become our neighbor’s keeper."
The Marine also offered his "thoughts and prayers" to those affected by the attacks, which killed four Marines and wounded three others. He declared the shooting, allegedly carried out by Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez, an "act of domestic terrorism, regardless of how Washington spins it."
"This was a planned attack on the United Stated Military on United States soil," Meyer said.
According to law enforcement officials, the suspected gunman was born in Kuwait before becoming a naturalized citizen of the United States. His name was not on any U.S. terror watch list.
As of Friday morning, three of the Marines killed in the attacks had been identified as Gunnery Sgt. Thomas Sullivan, Marine Skip Wells, and Marine David Wyatt.
UPDATE 11:16 A.M., Sat., July 18: An earlier version of this post incorrectly identified the number of injured individuals as two. One of the injured individuals, a sailor, died early Saturday.