Texas events prove tougher gun control not the answer
A notice of a ban on weapons at the entrance to Starr’s Mill High School. Recent events in Texas help demonstrate that tougher gun control will not stop criminals.
November 15, 2017
The past week, a mass shooting occurred at a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas. Devin Kelley, the shooter, took the lives of 26 people after opening fire during a sunday service.
A gun in the right hands, the legal hands, was used to stop a murderer.
— Op-ed Editor Mitchell Smith
Kelley served in the United States Air Force until 2012, when he was convicted of assaulting his wife and son. According to federal law, Kelley was unable to own firearms. In fact, Kelley was denied a license to carry a handgun in Texas in 2015, due to a previous animal cruelty charge.
The laws that prevent these tragedies already exist. The Air Force later admitted that it had failed to send the information on Kelley to the national databases used for background checks, which would have prevented Kelley to purchase the weapons used in the shooting.
After Kelley left the church, an armed citizen fired two rounds and wounded him, causing him to drop his weapon and run off. Kelley eventually shot himself.
Yes, you read that right. A gun in the right hands, the legal hands, was used to stop a murderer.
Stephen Willeford, the citizen who fired on Kelley, used a semi-automatic rifle, similar to an AR-15, to fire between Kelley’s body armor. That accuracy was not due to luck. It came from his experience as an NRA instructor.
However, if it were not for the NRA, Willeford would not have stopped Kelley. If Democrats’ wish of an “assault weapons” ban were to be a reality, Willeford would not have stopped Kelley.
Once again, Democrats do not realize that tougher gun control does not stop mass shootings, and only takes guns from the hands of legal gun owners. The fact that a legal gun owner stopped a mass shooter proves it.
