A police officer standing over the body of the FedEx shooter on Thursday night radioed a report that should shame every member of Congress who persists in doing nothing meaningful about gun control.
“We have the suspect here inside. Looks like he has a gunshot wound to the head. Two rifles here,” the officer said. “Unless there’s another person out, this is going to be our suspect here.”
The suspect was Brandon Scott Hole, aged 19. He was still two years short of the federal minimum age to buy an alcoholic drink. But the federal minimum for buying a long gun is 18. He had purchased a SCCT Industries pump action shotgun, serial number V0607653, on March 2, 2020. The police visited his Indianapolis home the very next day for a “male reported to have suicidal ideation.”
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“Male purchased gun within 24 hours and voiced suicidal ideas [to] police as well,” the subsequent report read.
Hole was transported to a local hospital. The shotgun was confiscated.
“Seized from dangerous person,” the police report read.
Yet even though he was now officially recorded as suicidal and dangerous, Hole had managed to get his hands on not just one, but two rifles. The result was eight people shot to death at the FedEx facility in Indianapolis before Hole took his own life. An officer with paramedics who were tending to the wounded radioed a question.
“Whoever’s with the suspect, the medics are just wanting to know what kind of firearms you have, for medical stuff,” that officer asked.
“Rifle, .223 caliber,” the officer standing near Hole’s body replied.
That meant at least one of the guns was an assault rifle. The medics wanted to know so they could gauge how much damage was inflicted beyond the hole punched in the flesh. The velocity of a bullet fired by those weapons generates a shock wave that extends the damage considerably outside its path, shredding tissue, destroying entire organs, disintegrating blood vessels.
“Person shot, conscious, barely,” a voice ported on the radio.
“Transporting one extremely critical female,” another voice said.
A supervisor radioed an order to notify Ascension St. Vincent Hospital and Eskenazi Hospital to prepare for multiple wounded. Ambulance sirens in the wake of police sirens filled the night of a city that had suffered three mass shootings since the first of the year.
On Friday morning, police returned to Hole’s house. The items of evidence that were carried out included a cardboard box such as would contain a new rifle. The investigator carried it in one upraised hand with no apparent effort, so you knew it was empty.
The dead still lay at the shooting scene awaiting examination by the coroner’s office. Eleven miles away stood the Indiana Convention Center, where the NRA held its 2019 annual convention. Both of Indiana’s senators had addressed the gathering. Sen. Mike Braun (R-IN) had spoken nostalgically about the shotgun he owned when he was 10. Sen. Todd Young (R-IN) started out reciting the usual NRA nonsense.
“Guns don’t commit crimes, criminals commit crimes and crime is already illegal,” Young said.
He then spoke as if the Second Amendment were handed down by the Almighty, like in that movie where Charlton Heston played Moses before he became a real-life shill for the NRA.
“Our individual rights are gifts from God,” Young said. “You might say they are endorsements from our creator.”
When COVID-19 hit the following spring, Young and Braun sprang into action to assist their nation in peril and protect our God-given rights. They joined 26 other Republican senators in signing a letter to the FBI and ATF complaining that a surge in gun purchases was causing a backlog in background checks.
“In response to the pandemic, millions of Americans practicing safe social distancing have lined up outside of firearm retailers in order to purchase firearms,” the senators wrote. “Any unreasonable and unnecessary delay beyond the three business days unlawfully impedes the exercise of a person's fundamental constitutional right.”
Thousands upon thousands of Americans were dying of COVID-19 and refrigerator trucks were filling with bodies and these mutts were worried that gun sales—and therefore profits—might be delayed for a couple of days.
And never mind that shootings and homicides were increasing at record rates.
At least a few Republicans in Congress joined the Democrats in passing two modest gun control bills on March 11 of this year. One was H.R. 8, the Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2021, which would close the Gun Show Loophole and require background checks even for private sales. The other was H.R. 1446, the Enhanced Background Checks Act of 2021, which would extend the time maximum time to finish a background check. That would close the Charleston Loophole, which allowed white supremacist Dylann Roof to obtain a gun in 2015 because the background check was not completed by the deadline. He then murdered nine parishioners at an historically Black church in that city.
On April 2, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer pledged to bring the bill to a vote. More than 100 mayors signed a letter asking the Senate to pass the legislation. The signatories included Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett.
Five days later, President Joe Biden called for Congress to go further, banning assault rifles and high-capacity magazines as well as repealing the immunity from liability that gun manufacturers presently enjoy. Biden then issued an executive order that sounded much bigger than it was. It sought to stem the proliferation of untraceable “ghost guns” assembled by the customer from parts. And it provided a “model” for states to promulgate “red flag” laws which would allow families to petition courts to bar “people in crisis” who are a danger to themselves or others from having access to firearms.
The following day, Braun of Indiana responded as if he were still on the stage at the NRA convention.
"President Biden's executive order on gun control is so extreme that even the Democrat controlled Senate would never pass this bill that is a blatant assault on our Second Amendment rights,” Braun said in a statement. “We all want to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and the dangerously mentally ill, but that can't come at the expense of infringing on the rights of law-abiding citizens like a federal assault weapons ban—a one-size-fits-all approach from the federal government rarely works on any issue, including the Second Amendment.”
Seven days later, a teenager who had been officially deemed dangerous arrived at a FedEx facility near the Indianapolis airport with two rifles, at least one an assault weapon. He then proceeded to forever deprive eight law-abiding citizens of the preeminent, inalienable right that the Declaration of Independence lists even before liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Life.
