How The El Paso Shooter Obtained His Firearm :: 08/29/2019

One of the points of interest following any mass shooting is in just how the shooter got his firearm in the first place. After all, so much of gun control revolves around trying to prevent that individual from obtaining a firearm, it only makes sense we’d want to see what he did to get it.

With El Paso still very fresh on our minds, we still want to know how he got the WASR-10 he used to kill 22 people and injure 24 others.

Now, we know.

When the alleged gunman walked into an El Paso Walmart earlier this month to carry out the worst massacre of Hispanic people in recent American history, he went in with an assault weapon he said he bought from Romania, according to a Texas Department of Public Safety report obtained by The Texas Tribune.

The white 21-year-old suspect in the shooting told El Paso police shortly after his arrest that the Romanian AK-47 was sent to a gun dealer near his home in Allen, a suburb outside of Dallas. He also said he bought a thousand rounds of ammunition from Russia.

…

Gun experts said it’s common for people to buy imported firearms online and have them delivered through local gun stores, which complete the necessary background check. Although the suspect said he purchased the gun from Romania, they said he likely bought online a Romanian-manufactured gun that had been imported into the United States.

“Primarily the reason that people are attracted to these imports is that they’re less expensive,” said David Chipman, a senior policy adviser at Giffords, a national gun control group, referring to similar U.S. weapons like the AR-15.

Of course, Chipman is a noted anti-gunner, but he’s not wrong. They’re often somewhat less expensive, though that’s not nearly as true today as it was a decade or more ago.

However, there’s one very important factor that needs to be talked about in all of this, and that’s how he suspect got the gun. He placed an order and had it shipped to an FFL who then conducted the background check.

So much for just ordering it off the internet, huh?

Also, he went through a background check. That’s the same background check we hear needs to be conducted for all gun sales. Well, this guy went through that.

And that’s kind of the point here.

You see, gun control advocates keep demanding new regulations, but just what regulations would have stopped him from getting his gun in the first place? He complied with all the regulations. He didn’t conduct some back-alley deal. He didn’t buy at gun from some guy he met on Facebook. He didn’t do any of that. He placed an order just like millions of other Americans, then went and picked it up just like those other millions of Americans.

Where he differed from them was in how he used that firearm.

The sooner people come to terms with that fact, the sooner we can start talking about real solutions rather than this anti-gun nonsense that won’t do anything about anything.

Tom Knighton is a Navy veteran, a former newspaperman, a novelist, and a blogger and lifetime shooter. He lives with his family in Southwest Georgia. https://bearingarms.com/author/tomknighton/

https://bearingarms.com/tom-k/2019/08/29/el-paso-shooter-obtained-firearm/