Texas Mall Massacre: Gun Lover Becomes Gun Control Advocate
Steven Spainhouer described trying to help a girl who "had no face."
Steven Spainhouer’s son called his dad and told him he heard gunfire. Spainhouer, a former officer in the U.S. Army, ex-police officer, and gun enthusiast rushed to the mall, arriving even before emergency services. He immediately started giving CPR to the those who’d been shot. Spainhouer told CBS:
“The first girl I walked up to was crouched down covering her head in the bushes. So I felt for a pulse, pulled her head to the side and she had no face.”
Not many doctors—and fewer citizens—in the culture have ever seen what an AR-15 really does to a person. Images are never published on the theory that it’s too graphically disturbing for the general public.
It is. It was also too much for the ex-Army and -police officer, who told MSNBC:
“I’m a gun lover. I have guns. But these [high-powered rifles] have got to get off the streets…”
Texas Governor Greg Abbott and U.S. Senator Ted Cruz continued to claim that thoughts and prayers are the solution to this problem. Any attempt to remove AR-15s and other assault rifles from the magazines of civilians—in some states even those too young to vote or drink beer—is met with cries that people’s freedoms are being assaulted. California Governor Gavin Newsom had this to say to them on Twitter:
“This is freedom?? To be shot at a mall? Shot at school? Shot at church? Shot at the movies? We have become a nation that is more focused on the right to kill than the right to live.”
Abbott and Cruz, however, continue to spout the new GOP scripted response to the laments of the dead:
It’s not the guns—the new GOP mass-hypnosis chant goes. No, they say. It’s an alleged mental health crisis in America that causes mass murder, not guns.
No, it is not. Though America offers pathetically little financial support for mental health screenings and treatment—and needs to change its priorities on this issue—mental health problems are not a major cause of mass gun violence.
Fewer than 5% of mass shootings and mass killings involve an attacker who has mental health problems.
The Allen, Texas mall shooting was carried out by a neo-Nazi white supremacist—wearing the same “death squad” insignia worn by the Proud Boys—who appears to have targeted Asians. Spainhouer commented on the new super-excuse for MAGAns and hyper-conservatives to hold on to military-grade assault weapons.
As reported by The Guardian:
Spainhouer bristled at the notion that anything other than actual gun control policies would curb the pace of mass killings in the US.
“When you get hit with an automatic weapon fire at close range, there is no opportunity for survival,” Spainhouer said to MSNBC. “I don’t know what the gunman’s problem was, but it wasn’t mental health that killed these people. It was an automatic rifle with bullets.”
Spainhouer’s son survived the attack. Having seen what he saw, Spainhouer, the father who tried to help the girl with no face, is now a gun control advocate.