Brian Doherty Says Colorado's New Gun Laws Didn't Stop the Shooting
Colorado's gun laws made the news last week following a shooting at Arapahoe High School in the city of Centennial. One student was injured in an 80-second attack involving five gunshots and one Molotov cocktail. Shooter Karl Pierson then killed himself with a 12-gauge pump action shotgun that he had legally purchased (As an 18-year-old he would not have been able to legally purchase a handgun). He was reported to have been cornered by an armed deputy on the school grounds before the suicide.
Pierson exhibited no known "warning signs." He was a debater, a track runner, strongly anti-Republican and anti-free market. There was no easy or obvious way to mark him as a person who needed to be kept away from guns. Some thought he seemed "weird" at times, he was bullied a bit, and he went to Bible study. In other words, writes Brian Doherty, he was just like many, many thousands of other American teenagers. Better eyes, better programs, better laws could not have prevented this particular shooting from happening.