Mother Jones
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America has now experienced two mass shootings in less than a year that have been complicated by open-carry gun laws.
As the deadly attack on police officers unfolded in Texas on Thursday, the Dallas Police Department publicized a photo of a “suspect” and solicited the public’s help finding him. The photo showed a man in a camouflage T-shirt with a rifle strapped over his shoulder who was participating in the peaceful Black Lives Matter protest where the attack took place.
This is one of our suspects. Please help us find him! pic.twitter.com/Na5T8ZxSz6
— Dallas Police Depart (@DallasPD)
About 40 minutes later, the Dallas PD announced that the man, now described as a “person of interest,” had turned himself in. He was interrogated and soon released, no longer suspected of any involvement in the attack. The man, Mark Hughes, was carrying his gun lawfully and has since received numerous death threats, according to his attorney. (Texas, like most states, allows rifles to be carried openly in public.)
The sequence of events involving Hughes underscores how citizens carrying firearms on display can compound the danger in a violent, chaotic situation. Last fall, several police chiefs in Colorado spoke out about the potential perils after authorities responded tepidly to a report of a man in Colorado Springs walking around with an assault rifle—just before he went on a deadly rampage.
“The problem that we all face is that we never have all the information,” said one chief after the Colorado Springs attack. Another noted that the police had no codified way for responding to such situations. In Colorado Springs, that may well have prevented a faster response to a lethal threat. In Dallas, clearly it could have endangered Hughes’ life and possibly those of others around him.
Gun lobbyists argue that arming more “good guys” is the solution to stopping mass shootings, but history shows that’s a myth. And police leaders, FBI agents, and other law enforcement officials have long said that ordinary citizens with guns will “divert them from the real threat.”
Read More:
How Open-Carry Gun Laws Make Mass Shootings Even More Dangerous
