By the NRA’s definition, Aaron Brown Myers started out on June 5 as “a good guy with a gun.” He carried a gun while working as a security guard, so presumably his company checked whether his carrying it violated any laws.
When he killed Hazrat Ali Rohani without trying to verify his belief about what Rohani and two other teenagers were doing, Myers turned into a bad guy with a gun.
The NRA’s simplistic motto would have it that the world is divided into the good and the bad, but they don’t acknowledge that a person’s behavior might be good until some spark flips it.
At that moment, this now-bad guy is prone to commit violence. His possession of a gun greatly increases the likelihood of a tragic outcome like this one, and the number, and easy accessibility of guns, that our society is literally swimming in, greatly increases the likelihood that he will have one.
Michael O’Leary, Seattle