In El Paso, the shooter used a semi-automatic Kalashnikov-style rifle with a magazine that holds 30 rounds. In Dayton, a man using an AR-style pistol modified to act as a rifle with a Drum magazine that can hold 100 rounds killed nine people in 30 seconds. In Texas and Ohio it’s legal to buy military-style firearms with large-capacity magazines and carry them in public without a permit. These guns were acquired legally.
The gunman who killed three at the Gilroy, Calif., Garlic Festival last week drove to Nevada to buy his military-style rifle that was configured in a way that is illegal in California.
After the 2018 Valentine’s Day massacre at Parkland, Fla., that left 17 dead, there were new state gun laws. But because each state has its own strange reasons for allowing battlefield weapons to be sold to anyone old enough to buy them, getting a gun is the least of a shooter’s worries. There have been 255 mass shootings in this country so far this year.
To this week’s victims, we regret not being vigorous enough to stop this and we grieve with those who loved you.
El Paso
Jordan and Andre Anchonda, 25 and 23, died protecting their two-month old son
Arturo Benavides, 59
Ivan Manzano, 41
Javier Amir Rodriguez, 15
Angie Englisbee, 86
Leo Campos and Maribel Hernandez
Maria Legarreta Rothe
Sara Regalado, 66
Adolfo Hernández
Jorge Garcia
Elsa Mendoza de la Mora
Gloria Márquez
Ivan Manzano
Maria Flores, 77
Paul Flores, 77
David Johnson, 63
Luis Juarez, 90,
Elsa Libera Marquez, 57
Maribel Loya, 56
Margie Reckard, 63
Juan Velazquez, 77
Dayton
Megan Betts, 22
Lois Oglesby, 27
Derrick Fudge, 57
Logan Turner, celebrating turning 30
Nicholas Cumer, 25
Thomas McNichols, 25
Monica Brickhouse, 39
Beatrice Warren-Curtis, 36
It is important to know how to help. Do your best to keep a victim’s blood in their body. Use a shirt, sock, bandanna, whatever you have. Don’t let someone who has been shot die from blood loss, which can happen within minutes. Stuff what cloth you have into the wound or push the hole closed with your hands and hold it until EMTs arrive.