Another Fucking Mass Shooting At US School

[Copernicus]

...

You aren't saying anything to contradict anything I've said other than offering your opinion.

Which opinion am I supposed to have offered? "However, the ABA has a record of nonpartisanship. They don't care whether judges are liberal or conservative, only that they follow legal precedent and have a solid record of education and experience in the law." was a statement of opinion. You haven't backed it up with anything but complaints about unbelievers. Why should any neutral skeptic suppose your opinion about the ABA has more basis in fact than conservatives' contrary opinion about the ABA? "Biased" and "unbiased" are claims people typically make respectively about those who disagree with them and those who agree with them.

The ABA is open and clear about the criteria that they use. It is stated in the NY Times article I just cited, and those criteria are the three that I listed but that you omitted from your quote of my post. Here is the text from that article.

The bar association says it does not consider ideology in its ratings, basing them only on professional competence, integrity and judicial temperament. It is the third factor, one the association defines to include compassion, open-mindedness and commitment to equal justice under the law, that critics say leaves room for subjective judgments that may tend to favor liberals.

I have bolded the three criteria and the one that seems to give conservatives the most difficulty--compassion, open-mindedness and commitment to equal justice under the law. I can see where conservatives might have a problem with such a criterion. You claim not to be a conservative, but you certainly seem to go along with the idea that the ABA is politically biased, based on the conservative "cottage industry" that you find so convincing.

In any event, we appear to be agreed that Republican judges make politically motivated rulings and are selected for that tendency. My impression is that Democratic judges do likewise and are likewise selected for that tendency. If you've gotten the impression that they just follow the law and are appointed by legislators who want them to just follow the law, that might be because their political biases align with your own. If so, that's something you're unlikely to detect by yourself or to be persuaded of by evidence. Either way, the point is, the judges' respective rulings are unlikely to be due to financial incentives, which was the original claim about firearms that sent us down this rathole.

It is certainly true that judges are affected by their political biases, but I do not believe that the ABA really scores political biases that heavily. I think that the scorecard they use simply favors judges who are better able to see both sides of an argument and rule according to what they feel the law requires regardless of politics. That is, they are more willing to follow precedent that conservative judges are ideologically unhappy with, and I think that fact is reflected in the number of cases being sent up to the Supreme Court in the hopes of overturning past precedent. And this has overturned an astonishing number of wide-ranging past precedents on so many topics that have been settled law for so many years. The Heller ruling is a very strong case in point, since there is nothing in the language of the Second Amendment or the historical record to support the claim that personal ownership of weapons unconnected to militia duty is what the amendment was intended to guarantee as a right. Until that ruling, the militia connection was always a requirement because of the plain language in the amendment.

 

[Gospel]

If your assertion were accurate, firearms would exclusively belong to well-regulated militias. Laws are not overturned solely because they violate the Constitution; rather, they are overturned when a sufficient number of legislators and judges are financially incentivized to do so, or when the failure to adopt a particular law would result in significant financial losses for an industry or the government itself.

Supreme Court justices are supposed to be kept away from such incentives by appointment to a position that there's no higher court to be promoted to from, that they won't be fired from, and that they don't have to run a reelection campaign for. Of course that doesn't always work (cough cough) but mostly they seem to be motivated by ideology.

I think rather mostly they are motivated by a combination of "we covered for you in the confirmation hearings, we can as easily un-cover for you, so we own you now" and ideology.

And that ideology is all about some fantasy afterlife in Honah Lee where they all swim in a sea of gold with puff the magic dragon.

 

[Jarhyn]

If your assertion were accurate, firearms would exclusively belong to well-regulated militias. Laws are not overturned solely because they violate the Constitution; rather, they are overturned when a sufficient number of legislators and judges are financially incentivized to do so, or when the failure to adopt a particular law would result in significant financial losses for an industry or the government itself.

Supreme Court justices are supposed to be kept away from such incentives by appointment to a position that there's no higher court to be promoted to from, that they won't be fired from, and that they don't have to run a reelection campaign for. Of course that doesn't always work (cough cough) but mostly they seem to be motivated by ideology.

I think rather mostly they are motivated by a combination of "we covered for you in the confirmation hearings, we can as easily un-cover for you, so we own you now" and ideology.

And that ideology is all about some fantasy afterlife in Honah Lee where they all swim in a sea of gold with puff the magic dragon.

I would much rather make this a world where we can all have nice things. The problem is they want a gated community where all the poors are kept out forever and ever. Apparently it's just not heaven if you can't know that everyone you hate is in hell being tortured forever.

 

[Elixir]

If your assertion were accurate, firearms would exclusively belong to well-regulated militias. Laws are not overturned solely because they violate the Constitution; rather, they are overturned when a sufficient number of legislators and judges are financially incentivized to do so, or when the failure to adopt a particular law would result in significant financial losses for an industry or the government itself.

Supreme Court justices are supposed to be kept away from such incentives by appointment to a position that there's no higher court to be promoted to from, that they won't be fired from, and that they don't have to run a reelection campaign for. Of course that doesn't always work (cough cough) but mostly they seem to be motivated by ideology.

I think rather mostly they are motivated by a combination of "we covered for you in the confirmation hearings, we can as easily un-cover for you, so we own you now" and ideology.

And that ideology is all about some fantasy afterlife in Honah Lee where they all swim in a sea of gold with puff the magic dragon.

I always thought that song was about weed. The gang of nine probably meet in secret and get blasted.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

How does your take on these two anecdotes have anything to do with the need for red flag laws? You can find anecdotes of people being treated poorly or charged incorrectly all the time, and the point has already been made that gun ownership comes with financial and safety risks that the owner is responsible for.

The basic issue is that you're arguing the laws are fair and reasonable and I'm showing cases of them being neither. Just because you like the idea doesn't make any given implementation good. I am not opposed to the idea but I see it often being done horribly.

That is an utterly irrelevant straw man argument. I never said that "any given implementation" would be good, did I? I never claimed that a red flag law would always lead to fair treatment by authorities or that no one would ever be wrongfully targeted. Even you admit that you are not opposed to the idea, which is to say that you concede my point. But then you start accusing me of favoring that the law be implemented horribly. What are you trying to say here? You may not trust the government to implement the law well, but what is your solution to that problem? To have no law at all, even though you don't oppose the idea of one????

Will you argue that we repeal laws against drunk driving because you discovered that somebody was accused who wasn't actually drunk?

The problem I'm having with your position is that you don't seem to care about holes in the system that cause radically unfair treatment.

You're comparing it to drunk driving--actually, a good comparison as it likewise has some radically unfair manifestations. People are considered to be "driving" drunk when they have control (as observed by having the keys) and being in the vehicle. Whether there was any intent to drive is irrelevant. The laws were put in place so the cops could arrest a drunk driver who was asleep at the wheel or the like, but the result is them arresting people sleeping it off in the bar's parking lot and people who get into cars for non-driving reasons. There's a fairly simple fix: It's not DUI if you're not moving (running the engine to keep warm isn't driving!) and are parked where you were drinking, parked at home or parked someplace you intended to sleep that night. (Say, a campsite, the weather drives you into your car.) You can support laws against drunk driving while calling foul about laws that permit such errant prosecutions.

That's what I'm doing about red flag laws--the concept is good but as implemented they generally have big problems.

 

[Copernicus]

How does your take on these two anecdotes have anything to do with the need for red flag laws? You can find anecdotes of people being treated poorly or charged incorrectly all the time, and the point has already been made that gun ownership comes with financial and safety risks that the owner is responsible for.

The basic issue is that you're arguing the laws are fair and reasonable and I'm showing cases of them being neither. Just because you like the idea doesn't make any given implementation good. I am not opposed to the idea but I see it often being done horribly.

That is an utterly irrelevant straw man argument. I never said that "any given implementation" would be good, did I? I never claimed that a red flag law would always lead to fair treatment by authorities or that no one would ever be wrongfully targeted. Even you admit that you are not opposed to the idea, which is to say that you concede my point. But then you start accusing me of favoring that the law be implemented horribly. What are you trying to say here? You may not trust the government to implement the law well, but what is your solution to that problem? To have no law at all, even though you don't oppose the idea of one????

Will you argue that we repeal laws against drunk driving because you discovered that somebody was accused who wasn't actually drunk?

The problem I'm having with your position is that you don't seem to care about holes in the system that cause radically unfair treatment.

I never said one word to justify your unfounded assumption that I approve of radically unfair treatment. Perhaps you dreamed it up, because you've pigeonholed me as a liberal, and that fits with your stereotype of liberals.

You're comparing it to drunk driving--actually, a good comparison as it likewise has some radically unfair manifestations. People are considered to be "driving" drunk when they have control (as observed by having the keys) and being in the vehicle. Whether there was any intent to drive is irrelevant. The laws were put in place so the cops could arrest a drunk driver who was asleep at the wheel or the like, but the result is them arresting people sleeping it off in the bar's parking lot and people who get into cars for non-driving reasons. There's a fairly simple fix: It's not DUI if you're not moving (running the engine to keep warm isn't driving!) and are parked where you were drinking, parked at home or parked someplace you intended to sleep that night. (Say, a campsite, the weather drives you into your car.) You can support laws against drunk driving while calling foul about laws that permit such errant prosecutions.

That's what I'm doing about red flag laws--the concept is good but as implemented they generally have big problems.

That is not what you appear to be doing with red flag laws. At first, you appeared to object to them in principle, although you no longer appear to do that. If you want to improve the implementation of such laws by making them fairer, I'm all for that. However, your suggestion for a minor tweak of drunk driving laws does not cover all instances where the law is applied unfairly or unjustly. The same is obviously going to be true about any such law, including red flag laws. Still, we have it on record here that you are in favor of red flag laws, just as I am. So we seem to be in violent agreement on that score. There is room for disagreement on the details of implementation. I'm less concerned about people being deprived of their guns than I am of them being deprived or their lives and their loved ones. And I don't believe that the Second Amendment has been correctly interpreted by the Supreme Court, but they have the power to interpret it any way they want, and I only have the power to express my disagreement with their interpretation.

 

[IIDB Staff]

Please refrain from squabbles and sniping at one another. A focus on positive, open, and engaging discussions for all users is preferred. Direct your comments at the topic, not at the motives and actions of other users. Failure to do so may lead to penalties.

 

[Bomb#20]

"However, the ABA has a record of nonpartisanship. They don't care whether judges are liberal or conservative, only that they follow legal precedent and have a solid record of education and experience in the law." was a statement of opinion. You haven't backed it up with anything but complaints about unbelievers. Why should any neutral skeptic suppose your opinion about the ABA has more basis in fact than conservatives' contrary opinion about the ABA? "Biased" and "unbiased" are claims people typically make respectively about those who disagree with them and those who agree with them.

The ABA is open and clear about the criteria that they use.

Page Not Found
404 Error

Unfortunately, this page does not exist. Please check your URL or return to the homepage.

It is stated in the NY Times article I just cited, and those criteria are the three that I listed but that you omitted from your quote of my post. Here is the text from that article.

The bar association says it does not consider ideology in its ratings, basing them only on professional competence, integrity and judicial temperament. It is the third factor, one the association defines to include compassion, open-mindedness and commitment to equal justice under the law, that critics say leaves room for subjective judgments that may tend to favor liberals.

I.e., you've provided evidence that they claim to be unbiased. That isn't evidence that they're unbiased.

...you certainly seem to go along with the idea that the ABA is politically biased, based on the conservative "cottage industry" that you find so convincing.

"Go along with" is a phrase that here means "fail to dismiss out of hand". I make no claim that the conservatives are correct; I simply note that I've seen them produce stats suggesting bias and I haven't seen the ABA or progressives produce stats suggesting lack of bias. Seeing as how you're the one here making a specific claim about the presence or absence of bias, why should anyone consider their questionable evidence less weighty than your non-evidence? Why should anyone take your word over theirs?

It is certainly true that judges are affected by their political biases, but I do not believe that the ABA really scores political biases that heavily. I think that the scorecard they use simply favors judges who are better able to see both sides of an argument and rule according to what they feel the law requires regardless of politics. That is, they are more willing to follow precedent that conservative judges are ideologically unhappy with, and I think that fact is reflected in the number of cases being sent up to the Supreme Court in the hopes of overturning past precedent. And this has overturned an astonishing number of wide-ranging past precedents on so many topics that have been settled law for so many years. The Heller ruling is a very strong case in point,

What the heck precedent do you think Heller overturned? It answered a question the SCOTUS had previously declined to answer.

(Incidentally, in case you aren't aware, the SCOTUS didn't overturn a darn thing in Heller. It upheld the appellate court ruling. If Heller overturned precedent at all it was the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit that did the overturning -- and appeals courts aren't really in the business of overturning SCOTUS precedents.)

since there is nothing in the language of the Second Amendment or the historical record to support the claim that personal ownership of weapons unconnected to militia duty is what the amendment was intended to guarantee as a right.

Precedent is clear that "militia" meant the entire male military-age population. (And based on the 14th amendment, that will no doubt be held to now include women if some idiot makes an issue of it.)

Until that ruling, the militia connection was always a requirement because of the plain language in the amendment.

You mean Miller? That was a ruling about types of weapons, not who could have them or what they could be used for. What SCOTUS decision ever held that individuals had no right to bear arms for self defense? What SCOTUS decision ever held that individuals had to be government-appointed militia members to have a right to bear arms?

The militia issue is a red-herring anyway. If the SCOTUS had enforced a stronger militia connection and held that a government was allowed to set up a militia chain of command and require gun owners to periodically show up for firearms training and drill practice and whatnot, the states mostly wouldn't do it. It wouldn't get the politicians who enact the sort of gun law Heller overturned what they want. They want a disarmed populace, not an armed populace serving in a militia they have to go to the effort of organizing.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

...

You aren't saying anything to contradict anything I've said other than offering your opinion.

Which opinion am I supposed to have offered? "However, the ABA has a record of nonpartisanship. They don't care whether judges are liberal or conservative, only that they follow legal precedent and have a solid record of education and experience in the law." was a statement of opinion. You haven't backed it up with anything but complaints about unbelievers. Why should any neutral skeptic suppose your opinion about the ABA has more basis in fact than conservatives' contrary opinion about the ABA? "Biased" and "unbiased" are claims people typically make respectively about those who disagree with them and those who agree with them.

The ABA is open and clear about the criteria that they use. It is stated in the NY Times article I just cited, and those criteria are the three that I listed but that you omitted from your quote of my post. Here is the text from that article.

The bar association says it does not consider ideology in its ratings, basing them only on professional competence, integrity and judicial temperament. It is the third factor, one the association defines to include compassion, open-mindedness and commitment to equal justice under the law, that critics say leaves room for subjective judgments that may tend to favor liberals.

I have bolded the three criteria and the one that seems to give conservatives the most difficulty--compassion, open-mindedness and commitment to equal justice under the law. I can see where conservatives might have a problem with such a criterion. You claim not to be a conservative, but you certainly seem to go along with the idea that the ABA is politically biased, based on the conservative "cottage industry" that you find so convincing.

In any event, we appear to be agreed that Republican judges make politically motivated rulings and are selected for that tendency. My impression is that Democratic judges do likewise and are likewise selected for that tendency. If you've gotten the impression that they just follow the law and are appointed by legislators who want them to just follow the law, that might be because their political biases align with your own. If so, that's something you're unlikely to detect by yourself or to be persuaded of by evidence. Either way, the point is, the judges' respective rulings are unlikely to be due to financial incentives, which was the original claim about firearms that sent us down this rathole.

It is certainly true that judges are affected by their political biases, but I do not believe that the ABA really scores political biases that heavily. I think that the scorecard they use simply favors judges who are better able to see both sides of an argument and rule according to what they feel the law requires regardless of politics. That is, they are more willing to follow precedent that conservative judges are ideologically unhappy with, and I think that fact is reflected in the number of cases being sent up to the Supreme Court in the hopes of overturning past precedent. And this has overturned an astonishing number of wide-ranging past precedents on so many topics that have been settled law for so many years. The Heller ruling is a very strong case in point, since there is nothing in the language of the Second Amendment or the historical record to support the claim that personal ownership of weapons unconnected to militia duty is what the amendment was intended to guarantee as a right. Until that ruling, the militia connection was always a requirement because of the plain language in the amendment.

Regarding entities of ABA and Heritage Foundation, they have different tax statuses. ABA is a 501c6, like BBB or real estate, in this case an entity of lawyers. Heritage Foundation is a 501c3 because it is a so-called think tank or research thingy, creating biased reports for ideological reasons promoted as educational. Heritage also has a splinter group or subsidiary entity called Heritage Action for America with tax status 501c4 which engages in direct political activism, propaganda distribution, and grassroots organizing. The behaviors of the entities are largely constrained by their tax statuses because they'd get large fines and/or lose tax status if they operate outside their declared, legal scope. So the fact they have maintained their tax status is evidence of the different categories and features of the entities in question.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Regarding entities of ABA and Heritage Foundation, they have different tax statuses. ABA is a 501c6, like BBB or real estate, in this case an entity of lawyers. Heritage Foundation is a 501c3 because it is a so-called think tank or research thingy, creating biased reports for ideological reasons promoted as educational. Heritage also has a splinter group or subsidiary entity called Heritage Action for America with tax status 501c4 which engages in direct political activism, propaganda distribution, and grassroots organizing. The behaviors of the entities are largely constrained by their tax statuses because they'd get large fines and/or lose tax status if they operate outside their declared, legal scope. So the fact they have maintained their tax status is evidence of the different categories and features of the entities in question.

To continue....since the discussion was around Supreme Court nominees, most recently, we can observe some information about these entities and what positions they took for recent nominees.

The American Bar Association has a page on this here. One can see unanimous position of Standing Committee that Ketanji Brown Jackson was "well qualified." Prior to that, one can see a majority said Amy Coney Barrett was well-qualified while a minority said merely qualified. Prior to that, Kavanaugh was well-qualified by unanimous vote. None of that looks like secret partisanship on the sly. They also have non-partisan metrics for determining qualification status--integrity, professional competence, and judicial temperament. One can see these analyses as non-ideological based on evidence of voting for qualification status across both parties' nominees.

Now contrast that to the Heritage Foundation. On their website, they have the HF President's statement on Ketanji Brown Jackson dripping with ideological and partisan opinions, even if their claims are purported to be based in facts:

“Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation hearing made clear that she cannot be trusted to uphold the law and follow the Constitution as a Supreme Court justice. Plain and simple, she is unqualified to serve on the court.

“Throughout the hearing, conservative senators exposed her atrocious record and views on issues like crime, immigration, and critical race theory. Her answers were appalling and, at times, downright disturbing. It should deeply trouble all Americans that a judge who wishes to sit on our highest court continues to defend her alarming track record of light sentences for child sex offenders.

“In one of the most absurd moments at her hearing, Jackson even refused to define what a woman is because ‘she isn’t a biologist.’ Her answer exposes Jackson as, at best, unwilling to challenge the radical, anti-truth ideology of the left, and, at worst, sympathetic to it. That ideology is poisoning our legal system, government, and culture, and deserves no support from the Supreme Court.

“Americans deserve a judge who will follow and uphold the law. Jackson has shown that she would do the opposite. At a time when Americans are increasingly concerned about the rule of law and the safety of our children, a vote for Jackson would signal that our leaders couldn’t care less. Senators must reject her confirmation.”

Compare that to Heritage Action for America's statement on Ketanji Brown Jackson. They spread the propaganda to citizens, have an active list of citizens they have scared and send these messages to, and calls to political activism, such as to call Senators or spend money etc for the latest conservative craze:

Joe Biden has nominated an activist judge, Ketanji Brown Jackson, to the Supreme Court.​

Senators need to stand up to Biden and vote "NO" on her confirmation.​

Call your senators today.​

 

[marc]

So the solution to gun violence is more guns, and open carry. That will let the criminals know if they try anything they will get shot..
... oh wait..

 

[Copernicus]

Criminals are so unfair. They like to sneak up on you, instead of openly challenging you so that you have a chance to draw your gun and have a fair fight. Now they are actually sneaking up and stealing your gun! Do gun toters have to keep their weapons securely fastened with a strap or something? What if they need to draw them quickly? This is all really so unfair. OTOH, shouldn't there be a law that, if someone manages to steal your gun, they actually get to own it legally? After all, there should be some reward for people who disarm stupid idiots bearing lethal weapons that are easy to grab.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

If your assertion were accurate, firearms would exclusively belong to well-regulated militias. Laws are not overturned solely because they violate the Constitution; rather, they are overturned when a sufficient number of legislators and judges are financially incentivized to do so, or when the failure to adopt a particular law would result in significant financial losses for an industry or the government itself.

Supreme Court justices are supposed to be kept away from such incentives by appointment to a position that there's no higher court to be promoted to from, that they won't be fired from, and that they don't have to run a reelection campaign for. Of course that doesn't always work (cough cough) but mostly they seem to be motivated by ideology.

I think rather mostly they are motivated by a combination of "we covered for you in the confirmation hearings, we can as easily un-cover for you, so we own you now" and ideology.

And that ideology is all about some fantasy afterlife in Honah Lee where they all swim in a sea of gold with puff the magic dragon.

Rush the magic addict
Lived by the sea
Gobbling Oxycontin
In a land called Miami..

 

[Jarhyn]

If your assertion were accurate, firearms would exclusively belong to well-regulated militias. Laws are not overturned solely because they violate the Constitution; rather, they are overturned when a sufficient number of legislators and judges are financially incentivized to do so, or when the failure to adopt a particular law would result in significant financial losses for an industry or the government itself.

Supreme Court justices are supposed to be kept away from such incentives by appointment to a position that there's no higher court to be promoted to from, that they won't be fired from, and that they don't have to run a reelection campaign for. Of course that doesn't always work (cough cough) but mostly they seem to be motivated by ideology.

I think rather mostly they are motivated by a combination of "we covered for you in the confirmation hearings, we can as easily un-cover for you, so we own you now" and ideology.

And that ideology is all about some fantasy afterlife in Honah Lee where they all swim in a sea of gold with puff the magic dragon.

Rush the magic addict
Lived by the sea
Gobbling Oxycontin
In a land called Miami..

Why can't we have nice things? Because some people want to believe that the way to have nice things is to do nothing and then hope really hard they can get them by dying, only to be rewarded by having nice things handed to them without any work at all.

 

[robnisch]

Angry drunk man with AR-15 in Texass, Move on nothing to see here!

 

[Elixir]

Angry drunk mexican with a revolver or a knife could have done the same thing, right, conservos?

 

[Derec]

Angry drunk man with AR-15 in Texass, Move on nothing to see here!

Nothing to see here since you did not see fit to include a link.
Five people allegedly killed by man in San Jacinto County identified | Search for gunman continues

I wonder how your source knows he used an AR15? He hasn't been caught yet.

Investigators said the shooter, 38-year-old Francisco Oropeza, was confronted by neighbors and asked to stop shooting because they had a young child who was trying to sleep. Oropeza responded by saying he would do what he wants on his property.
"The next thing they know, he's walking up the driveway with a rifle in hand," Capers said.
Nearby residents said it's common for people in the area to shoot guns on their property.
"There is a lot of people here that like to shoot guns. It was just a matter of time before sometime like this happens," one resident said.
According to Capers, Oropeza escaped the area after the shooting. Several guns were recovered from his home by a SWAT team. At one point, they believed Oropeza was cornered in a wooded area near the scene but later said the search is still ongoing. The search area is now as large as 10 to 20 miles.

This article only identifies the weapon as a rifle and says that several guns were found on the shooter's property.
Not that it matters. He could have done what he did with any sort of firearm.

 

[Derec]

Angry drunk mexican with a revolver or a knife could have done the same thing, right, conservos?

This, but unironically. He could have done this with any kind of firearm, be it a rifle or handgun.

Or do you really think he could only have done this with an AR15? You think one needs a powerful rifle to shoot people in the back of the head? Why?

 

[robnisch]

Angry drunk mexican with a revolver or a knife could have done the same thing, right, conservos?

This, but unironically. He could have done this with any kind of firearm, be it a rifle or handgun.

Or do you really think he could only have done this with an AR15? You think one needs a powerful rifle to shoot people in the back of the head? Why?

ABC and MSNBC both say AR-15.

 

[Copernicus]

Angry drunk mexican with a revolver or a knife could have done the same thing, right, conservos?

This, but unironically. He could have done this with any kind of firearm, be it a rifle or handgun.

Or do you really think he could only have done this with an AR15? You think one needs a powerful rifle to shoot people in the back of the head? Why?

All that fuss over the type of rifle, and you didn't bother to wait until somebody explained why it was identified as an AR-15 or look up the information yourself. The police recovered the gun he used and revealed that it was an AR-15. That said, you are right that he could have used anything that shot bullets. So why was it important to you to stress that he might not have been using an AR-15? I guess it's because the AR-15 has become the favorite weapon of choice for mass murderers, and that strengthens the case for a ban on these assault style weapons, which are designed to kill a lot of people in a short space of time. In fact, that's exactly why they are favored by mass murderers. If the intent is to kill a lot of people quickly, then the AR-15 is a good choice. Along with lots of ammo and body armor.

Texas mass shooting suspect could be anywhere, sheriff says​