Americans are grappling with yet another massacre after a Texas church’s Sunday morning services were interrupted by a masked gunman who sprayed parishioners with bullets shot from an AR-15 platform rifle.
Former Air Force veteran Devin Kelley killed 26 people — many of them children — and also left 20 people injured in what authorities have called a “domestic situation.”
The murder weapon he used, authorities said, is the AR-15 assault rifle, which is popular with hunters.
The AR-15 rifle and similar makes are favored by shooters for their magazine-fed, gas-operated semi-automatic action. These rifles can also be customized.
The initials “AR” stands for ArmaLite Rifle, not to be misconstrued as “Assault Rifle” or “Automatic Rifle,” based on the original AR-15 invented by American engineer Eugene Stoner of ArmaLite Inc. in the late 1950s.
From its inception, the AR-15 became known as a weapon prized for being lightweight, accurate and able to fire multiple rounds. The AR-15 isn’t subject to the National Firearms Act, a law passed in 1934 that bans the possession of machine guns by civilians.
What’s more, Ronald Turk, associate deputy director and chief operating officer of The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), released a report this year inadvertently loosening the stigma on AR-15s by referring to them as ““modern sporting rifles.”
“These firearm types are now standard for hunting activities,” Turk wrote.
He acknowledged, however, that hunting is “vastly different than what it was years ago” and there should be a “reissue” of the 20-year-old “New Sporting Purpose” study to “re-examine” safety interests. These results should be made public to “address any concerns,” he argued.
According to a National Rifle Association blog post titled “Why the AR-15 is America’s Most Popular Rifle,” the weapon’s design was mimicked to create the automatic M-16 rifle, which is issued and still used today by American soldiers.
But the AR-15 has also been likened to “weapons of war” by President Obama in the wake of the Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida, where 29-year-old Omar Mateen slaughtered 49 and wounded 53 people in June 2016.
And it’s the same rifle that keeps reappearing again and again as a murder weapon in mass shootings.
These are the five most recent AR-15-involved mass shootings in the U.S.
Perched from his two-room hotel suite at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, Stephen Paddock, a 64-year-old retiree and avid video poker gambler, fired on hundreds of country music fans attending an outdoor country music festival.
The killer checked in on Sept. 28 with 10 bags and at least 23 guns, including AR-15-style and AK-47-style rifles and a “large cache of ammunition.”
Some of rifles were rigged with bump stocks, kits that mimic the firing of an automatic machine gun.
Paddock set up surveillance cameras inside and outside his suite but ultimately committed suicide, authorities said, when SWAT teams responded to his room.
In the early morning of June 12, 2016, 29-year old Omar Mateen crashed a night of partying at Pulse, a gay nightclub, in Orlando, Florida, and killed 49 people and injured 53 others.
Mateen took clubgoers hostage before slaying them. He died after engaging in a firefight with authorities.
The massacre was staged with an AR-15-style rifle and a handgun from a federally licensed dealer near Mateen’s home in Fort Pierce, Florida.
Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, stormed the Inland Regional Center during a Department of Public Health training session and holiday party to shoot and kill San Bernardino county workers assembling together.
Farook was an employee with the division and worked alongside many of the victims for years. According to the FBI, he used two semi-automatic AR-15 rifles in his attack.
After the killing spree, Farook and Malik were killed by police as they tried to make a getaway.
That Halloween morning, Noah Harpham, 33, armed with an AR-15 rifle, a 9 mm pistol and a .357 revolver killed a bicyclist and two women before being shot by police.
Witnesses reported Harpham walking down a street carrying a rifle and two gas cans.
Mohammod Youssuf Abdulazeez shot and killed four Marines and wounded three other people when the 24-year-old opened fire on the Naval Operation Support Center and an Armed Forces Recruiting Center.
Abdulazeez, of Hixson, Tennessee, was killed in a firefight with responding police officers after the rampage.
Investigators said the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga graduate possessed a Kalashnikov variant rifle, a Smith & Wesson handgun and a Saiga-12 semiautomatic shotgun. An AR-15 semiautomatic assault rifle was pulled by investigators from his family’s home.
