Gun Control Fails Again in Allen, Texas

A man shot innocent victims outside a shopping mall. The attacker was killed by an off-duty policeman who happened to be nearby. The mall is at the northern edge of Dallas’s suburbs. We’re hearing all kinds of claims about what we should do to be safer. Let’s look at each of those claims one at a time. It is hard to make things better, and easy to make them worse.

We were told that the murderer used a modern sporting rifle so those should be outlawed. The murderer killed eight people, but the news never told us that rifles are used by honest gun owners about 46-thousand times a year in self-defense. How many of those 46-thousand defenders should we disarm in the hope of saving 8 lives?

We were told that we need to have mandatory waiting periods before people are allowed to buy a firearm. The gun-control advocates didn’t mention that this mass-murder had his guns for years, so waiting periods would not have done a thing to disarm the attacker. Longer waiting periods might have disarmed more of the victims.

Gun-control politicians say it is common sense to limit the amount of ammunition that can be carried in a magazine. They pretend that criminals will obey our gun laws. If we really wanted to give the innocent victim a chance then we wouldn’t disarm them. Mass-murderers, and gun-control politicians, hate it when we can shoot back.

The elephant in the room is that the mall had signs that said “No Weapons” on the mall owners’ website. That might protect the property owners from legal judgements, but those regulations sure didn’t stop this mass-murderer from going armed. Mass murderers almost always attack us in so called “gun-free” zones where honest citizens are disarmed. Mass murderers attack us in so called “gun-free” zones 98-percent of the time. No matter how often their gun-control regulations fail, gun-control politicians keep demanding more of the same.

We were told that we need to raise the age at which people are allowed to own gun so that we might save more lives. The news media hid the fact that the mass-murderer in Allen, Texas was 33 years old. Disarming 18,19, and 20 year olds would not have stopped this mass murder. That means that age restrictions failed to keep us safe from mass-murderers.

Most mass murderers are between 20 and 30 years of age. What the news didn’t say is that young men and women are also disproportionately the victims of crime. The news forgot to mention that armed citizens stopped well over 100-thousand sexual assaults last year. Also, young people are disproportionately victimized by sexual assault. How many 18, 19, and 20 year olds should we disarm in the hope of saving 8 lives?

We were told that we need more background checks in order to be safer. The news media didn’t mention that the murderer was a security guard who passed many background checks. That means that background checks failed to disarm this mass murderer. Why would gun-control proponents want more of something that fails so often?

The murder was discharged from the military because he had mental health problems. We don’t know if the problems rose to the level that they would have required involuntary commitment for mental health treatment. We don’t know if the murderer received a dishonorable discharge that would have precluded him from passing a background check. We do know that the US Air Force failed to flag the murderer who attacked a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas. The government paid 145-million dollars for their failure to properly enter that murderer into the FBI list of people who are prohibited from buying firearms. The final settlement with all the victims may be larger.

There are several other mass-murderers who passed background checks they should have failed. Why are gun-control advocates asking us to use a system that fails so often?

I asked you some hard questions. I’m afraid that gun-control costs us more lives than it saves. That is what the facts look like to me.

Does that mean I think that more guns are the answer? I think that letting honest people defend themselves is part of the answer, but certainly not the whole solution. We want mental health treatment to be easier to get. We want the media to stop turning the murderers and their causes into instant celebrities. We know that would save a lot of lives.

What you might not know is that ordinary people like us stopped over half the attempted mass murders where we were allowed to go armed.

I wish I has simple solutions. We have given the problem a lot of thought. Maybe the best I can do is to point out the suggestions that would make things worse.

Sources-

Firearms ownership in the US- https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4109494

Mass murder stopped by armed citizens- https://bearingarms.com/camedwards/2022/10/05/armed-citizens-stop-more-mass-shootings-than-you-might-think-n62992

Government liability in Sutherland Springs attack- https://finance.yahoo.com/news/us-government-pay-145m-failing-152338779.html