Sutherland Springs

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.  

The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Things in Texas are bigger, they’ll tell you in the Lone Star State… sometimes in a bad way. It was the worst such civilian mass shooting in Texas’ history, big even by that state’s standards. Gunman Devin Patrick Kelley, 26, who apparently killed himself shortly after the attack, used a military-assault rifle (a version of the Ruger AR-15 pictured above with two supplemental handguns) to mow down dozens of parishioners during Sunday (November 5th) service in a Sutherland Springs, Texas Baptist church, about 30 miles from San Antonio, Texas.

As of this writing there were over 26 dead (age 18 months to 77) and 20 wounded, many critically. Dressed in tactical black including a ballistic vest, replete with a black mask enhanced with a white skull, Kelley clearly expected to survive the assault. Kelley’s online footprints reflect the he was zealous activist atheist; those who knew him described him as “weird,” “negative” and “depressed.” There were also stories of a domestic conflict: Kelley and his mother-in-law (who attended services that that Baptist church) were in a heated personal battle. One of his murder victims was apparently his wife’s 71-year-old grandmother. Wounded in an exchange of fire with a neighbor to the church, Kelley purportedly pulled over his car and ended his own life with a gunshot.

Texans will tell you that the neighbor who retrieved his gun to fire back at Kelley was the only thing that stopped the carnage, that “good guy with a gun” that the National Rifle Association is always talking about. What they don’t talk about is the fact that such assault weapons, with large magazine capacity, are so pervasive in this country, particularly in gun-crazy Texas. Or that for every justifiable gun homicide, there are 30 such gun-killings that are not justified. There is no excuse for allowing these weapons. Only the most twisted interpretation of the Second Amendment, completely ignoring the references noted above in red, could possibly justify the mere lawful existence of such assault weapons in our society. But the Supreme Court, bowing to the social pressure mounted by the NRA since 1977, has done precisely that. Here is how the U.S. Supreme Court has moved to that conclusion over time (Wikipedia):

“In United States v. Cruikshank (1876), the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that, ‘The right to bear arms is not granted by the Constitution; neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence’ and limited the scope of the Second Amendment's protections to the federal government. In United States v. Miller (1939), the Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment did not protect weapon types not having a ‘reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia.’

“In the twenty-first century, the amendment has been subjected to renewed academic inquiry and judicial interest. In District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), the Supreme Court handed down a landmark decision that held the amendment protects an individual right to possess and carry firearms. In McDonald v. Chicago (2010), the Court clarified its earlier decisions that limited the amendment's impact to a restriction on the federal government, expressly holding that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment incorporates the Second Amendment against state and local governments. In Caetano v. Massachusetts (2016), the Supreme Court reiterated its earlier rulings that ‘the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding’ and that its protection is not limited to ‘only those weapons useful in warfare’.”

Experts will tell you that Kelley’s military discharge for spousal abuse might have placed him in a category where even the Supreme Court would sustain a denial of his right to own such a weapon: “[Kelley] had served in the Air Force at a base in New Mexico but was court-martialed in 2012 on charges of assaulting his wife and child. He was sentenced to 12 months’ confinement and received a ‘bad conduct’ discharge in 2014, according to Ann Stefanek, the chief of Air Force media operations.” New York Times, November 5th. But Kelley bought the arms legally (two weapons in Texas, two in Colorado). His name somehow did not appear on any of the “lists” that should have otherwise disqualified him from gun ownership.

It’s not first time Texas has experienced such mass murders. “The shooting unfolded on the eighth anniversary of the attack in 2009 on Fort Hood in Texas, when an Army psychiatrist, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, killed 13 people in one of the deadliest mass shootings at an American military base. Major Hasan carried out his attack in an attempt to wage jihad on American military personnel.

“The death toll on Sunday also exceeded the number killed in 1966 by a student at the University of Texas at Austin, Charles Whitman, who opened fire from the school’s clock tower in a day of violence that ultimately killed 17. It also exceeded the number killed during a rampage at a restaurant in Killeen in 1991 in which a gunman fatally shot 23 people and then took his own life.” NY Times. My thoughts and prayers are with those killed or injured, and their families and friends, but there is no excuse for this horrific gun-culture in the United States. With this one incident, Sutherland Springs lost 4% of its population.

I’m Peter Dekom, and it is time to stop the madness and ban possession of any assault weapon or oversized magazine immediately… so we don’t need mostly good guys with a gun to try and stop them.