In a sad turn of events, a young man in California was recently killed during a mass shooting at Thousands Oaks — after surviving the brutal massacre in Las Vegas only last year. The young man was also a veteran, and Telemachus Orfanos’s mother has been widely quoted as saying she is not interested in prayers or thoughts, she only wants to see more gun control.
Even though there is a strong narrative running throughout the country that is anti-gun, even though this most recent shooting was in the liberal playground of California, it’s unlikely that this latest shooting incident is going to cause gun protests. Why? This small corner of the state is quite conservative, and the individuals at the bar are more likely to bemoan the fact that they didn’t have their firearms available to help stop the disaster in its tracks.
As California and Nevada residents continue to heal after the recent shootings, there are mixed messages coming from the individuals in the affected communities. While there are always calls to increase the strictness of gun laws, this time lawmakers and the media are hearing that more relaxed gun laws might have saved some of the 11 individuals who were killed during this most recent shooting.
The gunman, a Marine veteran with combat experience in Afghanistan, was thought to be suffering from PTSD, or post-traumatic stress disorder. This condition is not unusual in individuals who have returned from combat roles in the military. While there was a gun law that might have blocked the gunman from purchasing the weapon used in the shooting, the law itself stalled in legislation and never came to fruition.
The individuals from the Thousand Oaks community are affluent and more conservative-leaning than much of the state. The bar patrons were also a different mix than you might expect from the liberal state: a mixture of ex-military and police officers made up the majority of the crowd on that fateful evening. One of the survivors, Justin Bouse, noted that the community is quite unlikely to stage anti-gun protests — and might even protest their lack of ability to bring weapons into the bar to help protect the patrons.
The community is split between those who would like to see stricter gun control measures and those that would prefer to have more arms available in public places in order to help keep the peace. After the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida has been a banner for gun control activists to raise. Unfortunately, this may give them one more reason to beat the drums against Second Amendment rights.
This is truly a tragedy, and one that continues to play out repeatedly. As these incidents are amplified by the liberal media, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to justify lowered gun control regulations. Conservative individuals have to continually remind their left-leaning friends that gun control measures that are currently being proposed were unlikely to make a difference in the outcome of many of these sad incidents.
~ Firearm Daily
