Australia's former deputy P.M. urges boycott of U.S. over baseball player's killing, lashes out at NRA

Australia's former deputy P.M. urges boycott of U.S. over baseball player's killing, lashes out at NRA

Australia's former deputy prime minister is urging citizens to boycott travel to the United States after the slaying of Christopher Lane, a 22-year-old Australian collegiate baseball player who police say was targeted and killed for fun by three bored Oklahoma teenagers.

"You are 15 times more likely to be shot dead in the USA than you are here in Australia," Tim Fischer, the former Australian official, said in an interview with CNN Wednesday. "There is murder mayhem on Main Street USA every day of the week, but you hide from that."

Fischer slammed U.S. lawmakers for turning a blind eye to "sensible" gun control and lashed out at the National Rifle Association for using the Second Amendment as a shield against it.

"You let your congressmen and senators escape and dance around the bush when it's a very real circumstance supported by the NRA," Fischer said. "I've been to the Philadelphia Constitutional Museum. I've looked at your Second Amendment. I don't believe your Second Amendment provides for semiautomatics or automatics in the suburbs. This is why Australians and anybody else should think carefully about traveling to the USA, until you start to make a move on gun and firearm sensible control."

He added: "I enjoyed taking my family on the Coastal Starlight on Amtrak from Los Angeles to Seattle a few years ago. I'll think twice about it again because of your massacre level."

His comments came a day after prosecutors charged two of the boys, Chancey Allen Luna, 16, and James Francis Edwards Jr., 15, with first-degree murder, and a third, Michael Dewayne Jones, 17, as an accessory to first-degree murder after the fact.

Lane, from Melbourne, was shot once in the back as he was jogging in Duncan, Okla., on Friday. He died before paramedics arrived.

The two younger teens, who under Oklahoma law will be tried as adults, face life in prison without parole if convicted on the murder charge.