Mr. Mateen legally bought the AR-15-style rifle, and a handgun, used in the Sunday’s shooting, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said.
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The ban in question was passed into law in CT following the infamous 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, which left 20 children and six adults dead at the hands of shooter Adam Lanza and an AR-15 military-style rifle.
“[Lanza] chose the AR-15 because he was aware of how many shots it could get out”, said Nicole Hockley, who lost her son Dylan in that shooting. Snapchat video taken at the scene in Orlando indicates the AR-15 Mateen had was outfitted with a high-capacity magazine that allowed the shooter to continue firing for more than a minute without reloading. In 2013, the National Shooting Sports Foundation estimated there are somewhere between 5 million and 8.2 million assault weapons in circulation.
An AR-15 model was used by married couple Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, and Tashfeen Malik, 29, when they killed 14 people and wounded almost two dozen others at a work Christmas party in San Bernardino, California, last December.
To quantify “interest”, ThinkProgress used Google Trends to research how often people used the search engine to search the terms “San Bernardino”, “Virginia Tech”, “Sandy Hook” and “gun control” and measured the results against time.
Gadahn was incorrect on one point – fully automatic weapons, which shoot continuously when you hold down the trigger, have been banned since 1986. Remington’s parent company, Freedom Group, is presently being sued by the families of the victims of that shooting. Colt’s patent expired long ago and versions of the AR-15 are now made and sold by several firms, including Bushmaster, Remington Arms and Smith & Wesson. It is no wonder that this weapon was chosen by today’s shooter, as it has been by so many before him and as it undoubtedly will be again. “It’s really the gold standard for killing the enemy in battle, and it’s become the gold standard for mass murders of innocent civilians in civilian life”. He was armed with an AR-15 and other weapons. Now, nearly four years after that shooting, the Supreme Court is set to give a look-in to a challenge mounted against the law banning weapons like the AR-15 in CT, just days after a similar weapon was used to carry out one of the deadliest mass-shootings in U.S. history in Orlando, Florida.
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Last summer, Wal-Mart – the biggest gun seller in America – announced it would stop selling AR-15s, but as of Monday morning, AR-15 parts and kits were still available on the retailer’s website.
