Texas mass killing doesn't really help gun control argument

CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS / @CSI:cafe" by [puamelia] is marked with CC BY-SA 2.0 DEED.

Over the weekend, there was a horrific mass killing in Texas.

If you spent much time on social media, you may have heard a little bit about it. It doesn’t count as a mass shooting because it was inside the home, but the nomenclature doesn’t really matter all that much. To those who cared about the victims, why would it?

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The latest about the killing:

Five people are dead after being shot in a Texas home by a suspect armed with an AR-15 style rifle in a horrific series of “execution style” shootings, police said.

A manhunt is currently underway for the suspect, identified by the San Jacinto County Sheriff’s Office as 38-year-old Francisco Oropeza. The FBI’s Houston Field Office said it is assisting in the ongoing search.

A judge has issued an arrest warrant for Oropeza and assigned a $5 million bond. He is believed to have fled the county and is considered armed and dangerous, authorities said.

Neighbors asked suspect to stop shooting his gun in the yard: Sheriff

Police said the incident occurred at 11:31 p.m. local time on Friday when officials from the San Jacinto County Sheriff’s Office received a call about harassment in the town of Cleveland, about 55 miles north of Houston.

When authorities arrived at the location, they found several victims shot at the property, police said. Three of the deceased were females and two were males, including the youngest, an 8-year-old boy.

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(While it’s generally our policy not to name mass shooters, even in a case like this, I’m doing so now because the killer is still on the run and I want to help facilitate his arrest if at all possible.)

For many, this is all the evidence they need to push gun control. After all, Oropeza used the evil AR-15, a weapon many want to ban completely. Some others have argued that his previous actions–shooting in his yard–may have justified the use of a red flag order if Texas had one.

There are problems with that argument, though.

For one, Oropeza was in the country illegally. As such, he couldn’t lawfully buy that firearm in the first place, which means he got it illegally.

Meanwhile, it appears that many if not all of his victims were also in the country illegally, but because they didn’t violate gun control laws, they were unable to defend themselves.

See, while many gun control advocates are using this incident to claim gun control is needed, it’s really a case of it showing how little it actually does to keep guns out of the hands of the wrong people.

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Oropeza is currently being hunted because the authorities believe he murdered five people with a firearm he couldn’t lawfully own.

Does anyone really think someone like this wouldn’t have gotten a firearm with still more gun control laws on the books? I’m inclined to believe not. After all, how many laws had he already broken?

Especially as he’d been deported once, which means he couldn’t even pretend he didn’t know how to immigrate to the United States lawfully.

No, Oropeza appears to be a criminal through and through. He’d have gotten whatever kind of gun he could, and since his targets were unarmed, he could and would have killed them just the same.

Gun control wouldn’t have stopped him.

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