A White gunman who killed three Black people at a Jacksonville Dollar General store Saturday legally purchased the two firearms used in the racially motivated attack, local law enforcement confirmed.
The man, identified Sunday as 21-year-old Ryan Christopher Palmeter of Clay County, Fla., on Saturday drove to Edward Waters University, a historically Black college, but was refused entry, according to the school. He then drove to the nearby store, where he opened fire using an AR-15-style rifle inscribed with Nazi insignia, authorities said.
Police described a methodic rampage that lasted less than 11 minutes and killed Angela Michelle Carr, 52; Anolt Joseph Laguerre Jr., 19; and Jerrald De’Shaun Gallion, 29.
Jacksonville police on Sunday said law enforcement had been called about Palmeter previously in a domestic incident, and he also had been held during a mental health crisis. But those cases did not result in a criminal record, so there was no legal reason to stop him from acquiring the guns he purchased this year between April and July.
Even without knowing what the number would be, there’s some interesting nuance to this. Eg, a lot of guns used in crimes would be taken from family members or parents bought for their kids as a straw purchase, but from the perspective of the gun sale itself, it was a legal sale (even though the user of the gun didn’t legally acquire it). I call that particular example out because it’s been prominent in some school shootings, won’t be fixed by just limiting the purchase of guns, but is still something that only exists because of US gun culture.
There’s also the fact that a massive amount of gun crime is gang violence, where it’s more likely that the guns are illegally owned. This is still a tragedy and nobody should be dying to gun violence whether or not they’re in a gang. But unless innocent people are victims (which also is often the case!), gang violence isn’t usually what people are thinking of or focusing on, since many people’s concern is somewhat understandably focused on more random gun violence, where it’s harder to understand why it’s happening.