Texas loosens firearm laws hours after the state’s latest mass shooting left 7 dead
Texas’ new gun laws go into effect hours after another mass shooting
9 New Gun Laws Now In Effect In Texas; Some In Response To Church And Mass Shootings
Those headlines and those like it are what I’ve seen crawl across my various news feed again, and again, and again since the rampage Sunday in Odessa and Midland, Texas. The media wants you to know and for everyone to feel that nothing could be more shocking than the fact that laws, passed earlier and set to take effect September 1st, would take effect that day and change the concealed carry laws of Texas and strengthen residents individual rights to bear arms in defense of themselves.
That isn’t what those headlines say is it… oh no, these headlines express the barely veiled moral outrage at the state for daring to loosen any gun law. In the wake of a man who went berserk after being fired from work and then stopped by police for failure to signal, how could Texas dare to enable self reliance and self defense. The state that has 4 of the United States 10 worst mass shootings (and a sizeable chunk of its population, but who’s looking at that) how dare they!?
Odessa & Midland, The Seth Arto Rampage
Seth Arto, 36, has been identified as the perpetrator of Sunday rampage. Arto was pulled over for failing to use his turn signal and then open fired on the two officers, wounding them. He then drove through Odessa and Midland firing randomly as he fled police. He abandoned his vehicle and jacked a US Postal service vehicle, killing the driver as she was on the phone with her sister. The chase and subsequent gun battle wound end at a movie theater where Arto was shot and killed by officers.
The spree would claim 7 lives and 22 injuries over multiple incident sites. Chicago, by the way, has 4 deaths and 25 injuries since Sunday.
Texas has had Sutherland Springs, Sante Fe, El Paso, and now Odessa/Midland in the last 3 years. The response to the first two shootings was the increase in the ability of Texans to defend themselves. The second two happened before the laws took effect.
Background
Did Arto have any flags? Convictions? Background that would set him apart as “Extreme Risk” or needing to be incarcerated?
A 2001 misdemeanor arrest for criminal trespass and evading arrest, adjudication deferred. Alto was 36, meaning in 2001 he was 18 when he caught the trespass charge. He also had a 2018 citation for an FMC safety violation. He had a trespass charge in his youth and a traffic safety citation last year.
John Wester, an agent with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, confirmed the gunman had previously failed a federal background check for a firearm. Wester did not say when or why the check was failed. So he was flagged… for something… we just do not know what. He got this firearm somehow anyway, illegally if he was a prohibited person.
Did the ATF or local LE follow up on the attempt to purchase? We don’t know.
Beto has given us the Democrat party answer loud and clear. They believe that confiscating property from millions of Americans with no criminal history or intent will curb crime and stop people from snapping, all evidence to the contrary be damned.
Will we have a motive for Arto? Like Las Vegas this one may never be confirmed, but is it to much of a stretch to believe this is a man who broke, gave up, and decided to let the world know violently? He knew he would make headlines nationally and even internationally, what louder way could he share his personally held grievances. He had just been fired and then pulled over. He may have been returning to attack his job for firing him and we could be reading about a different incident of “workplace violence” this morning if he hadn’t have been stopped for failure to use his turn signal.
The what if’s here are endless.
What we know
What we know is that there will always be a small minority of people who will snap to violence if they feel they’ve been wronged enough. The culture of outrage we have engendered has done nothing to cool this in the last decade plus.
We know that the government and its agents are not a reliable means of personal protection, societal sure, but not personal. The two people shot at first in this attack were cops. The police response time on this one was 0 seconds and the circumstances still led where they led.
What we know are that headlines are what people see and they take most of their impression on the state of the world from the headline. So it does not matter if the article is technically true if the headline pushes the story they want.
