Owners chopping up guns
LOS ANGELES: A video of a man cutting his semiautomatic weapon in half has gone viral following the mass shooting at a Florida school, prompting a social media movement decrying easy access to assault rifles.
Scott Pappalardo, of New York state, is the star of a clip posted on Facebook that had been shared more than 360,000 times as of Wednesday afternoon. It shows him taking a power saw to the barrel of an AR15 assault rifle, saying he wanted to make sure it would never be used in a massacre like the one in Florida.
‘‘This isn’t the answer to solve all the problems. Quite frankly there is no one answer. There will always be people that will want to kill and will do it one way or another,’’ Pappalardo says in the video. ‘‘But they are not going to do it with this gun. And I’m hoping that maybe someone will see it and say: ‘Maybe I’ll do the same thing.’ ’’
Pappalardo, a gun rights supporter who says he has the Second Amendment of the US Constitution tattooed on his arm, closes the clip by pointing out that destroying the gun meant there would be one fewer lethal weapon in America.
Since Pappalardo made his post on Saturday afternoon, the hashtag #oneless has mushroomed on Twitter and Facebook as other gun owners have posted pictures or video of their firearms being destroyed.
Among them was Christian Cammas, a 35yearold Orange County, California, man who posted a photo of his destroyed AR15 rifle on Twitter along with the caption: ‘‘Noone needs a 50round clip military deathweapon #Oneless.’’
‘‘Having the freedom to own a gun like that is not as important as the safety of citizens,’’ Cammas said in the Twitter post. — Reuters