The recent shooting in Texas has begun fading from most news outlets but its effect on the world of politics and society is still apparent. Controversies to conspiracies and knee-jerk responses from politicians highlighted the events after the tragedy rather than a period of mourning. As days went on and investigations proceeded, the perception of the shooting and its events changed.
A quick rundown of the facts to educate both you the reader and the people this information will reach is:
- The firearm used by the Texas shooter was not an AR-15, information has not been released on what the firearm was but most believe it was an AR-556 based on an image on his Facebook.
- The rifle was bought legally even though his record and dishonorable discharge should have prevented him. This was due to an error by the Airforce to not submit his discharge to the FBI, whom is in charge of the database used by gun stores to perform background checks.
- The shooter was stopped by a civilian and another who chased the shooter on foot and later by car.
- 26 church goers were killed.
Many congressmen have already pushed measures to control the sale of firearms and there have been calls from the populace to heavily restrict firearms. Now most of these measures didn’t get past their call to action but some were given consideration. A dangerous precedent is being set in Congress and in the minds of our society. Not much focus or credit is given to the civilian who prevented the shooting from getting any worse, people are focusing more on body count rather than the tragedy and the people lost in the incident. Firearms and ownership of them have become a provocative topic in American politics.
Gun rights group that are established to preserve and protect American firearm rights in Congress have gotten a new momentum from the shooting after the civilian with a rifle stopped the shooter. This sort of new energy has boosted sales of rifles, brought needed attention to the weakening and poorly structured federal regulations on background checks and an inefficient bureaucracy.