The shooting at a gun store in Louisiana is an anomaly. It’s an aberration. It’s one of those things you never see more than once in a lifetime, if that.

At least, we sure hope it is.

Things like this just generally don’t happen. Gun stores are typically the kind of places you’re safe from a mass shooting precisely because so many people are armed. With three dead, one of which was the shooter, this meets some definitions of a mass shooting.

What’s more, we still don’t know what set the shooter off.

An ammunition customer showed no sign of anger or agitation before he launched a sudden shooting rampage at a New Orleans area gun store, the local sheriff said Monday, two days after the attack left three people, including the shooter, dead.

Jefferson Parish Sheriff Joe Lopinto confirmed that [name redacted], 27, who had a legal permit to carry a gun, instigated the exchange of gunfire Saturday afternoon at the Gun Outlet in suburban Metairie.

“I don’t know why,” Lopinto said. “There are certain crimes that happen in your career and this is the one for me: There’s no reason that it ever should have turned into this event.”

Seven other people, all firearms-trained employees of the gun store and shooting range, fired at [the shooter] before he was killed outside the building, Lopinto said. Two people were wounded.

Lopinto said [the killer] had walked into the store with a loaded weapon and was told that was against store rules. Interviews with witnesses and reviews of video indicate [the gunman] showed no sign of anger or agitation before he walked to the front door as though he were going to exit. But he then fired into the air outside before firing his gun as he went in and out of the building multiple times.

The fact that the gunman had a permit to carry is also an anomaly.

The fact that he wasn’t angry or agitated suggests that this was part of a plan; like he wanted to be asked to leave. At that point, he’s covering the obvious exit, so he turned and fired.

On the other hand, the fact that he went in and out of the building makes me wonder just what that plan might have been, or was he someone who should have been before a court sometime in the past over his mental instability but no one spoke up?

With things as they are, this isn’t good for gun rights. Mass shootings routinely turn out poorly for our side, and with this one happening in the last place we said it could happen, the gun rights crowd will likely have to answer questions in the future.

However, it’s also important to understand that there were enough people in that store for the body count to have been much, much worse. It wasn’t, because the staff and customers were armed and put the shooter down quickly enough that no one else could get hurt. Maybe this wasn’t so much a mass shooting as “suicide by gun store.” With the killer dead, we’re unlikely to ever know for certain.

Just brace yourself. Your online debates are going to take a different tone going forward.

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