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Three children and three educators were killed at a Christian elementary school in Nashville on March 27. The shooter, a 28-year-old former student, was armed with three legally purchased firearms, including an AR-15 military-style rifle. Two weeks later, a man shot and killed five colleagues at the bank in Louisville, Kentucky where he worked. He had legally purchased an AR-15 rifle six days earlier.
Ten of the 17 deadliest mass killings in the United States since 2012 involved AR-15s. Straight Arrow News contributor Jordan Reid takes a look at how AR-15s decimate human organs and asks why anybody is still fighting to keep the deadly weapons in circulation.
What continues to confound me, what I truly do not understand, is why anybody, anywhere is fighting to have AR-15 rifles out and about in our communities. AR-15 rifles are, as we all know by now, pretty unique. Their bullets don’t just enter and exit the body. They leave a trail of destruction through tissue that is oftentimes not survivable even with immediate medical intervention. They are designed not just to wound. They are designed to destroy. They are made to kill. The Washington Post put up a very hard-to-read but very important article on exactly what happens when bullets from an AR-15 enter the body and you should read it. What they do is they blow it apart. What is the possible reason for allowing these to remain in circulation? Why? What do you need one for?
I remember learning about Sandy Hook on the news. I was home with my one year old. I didn’t know what to do so I took him to the playground and I remember it was cold out so the tears were freezing on my cheeks. I pushed him on the swing and I thought about how this was the most horrible thing that had ever happened. It had to be. It was and it wasn’t.
I say this often, but these Republican legislators — the same ones, by the way, creating a moral panic over sexual education and hotly debating whether to ban Maya Angelou from curriculums — they do not care about our children. They don’t care.
