New York state gun owner Scott Pappalardo made a video Saturday in which he destroyed his AR-15 semi-automatic rifle in response to the Parkland school shooting in Florida last week that killed 17 students and staff and wounded others.
Pappalardo, 50, said on the Facebook video that he wanted to prevent anyone from ever using the weapon — the same type the Parkland shooter used — to commit a violent act or take more lives.
“Here we are, 17 more lives lost, so when do we change?” Pappalardo said in the video, which has been viewed 18 million times and shared more than 350,000 times. “When do we make laws that say maybe a weapon like this isn’t acceptable in today’s society?”
In a separate post, Pappalardo wrote that he has been a gun enthusiast and Second Amendment supporter for 30 years and even has a tattoo of the Second Amendment on his arm dating back that far.
“I still believe [in the right to keep and bear arms] but also believe there needs to be much tougher gun laws,” he wrote.
“Is the right to own this weapon more important than someone’s life?” he asks in the video. “Look at the pictures of those victims. Is that right more important?”
Pappalardo said he enjoyed using the AR-15 to shoot at targets but that he doesn’t need the weapon, nor did he want to sell it in case it fell into the hands of a criminal.
“Any legal gun owner is capable of snapping and committing a horrific crime even without mental illness,” he reasoned, pointing out that both the Parkland shooter and Las Vegas shooter who killed 58 people were legal gun owners before the attacks.
Pappalardo sawed his gun in half and siad, "People always say there's so many of them out there. Well, now, there's one less.
Florida hunter Ben Dickmann also posted on Facebook that he decided to turn his AR-15 rifle over to police. “I don’t need it,” he said. “I will lead by example.”
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