Some giving up the guns they love

ATLANTA — One man in upstate New York sawed his AR-15 rifle into pieces and posted a video of it on Facebook. A woman in Connecticut did the same with her handgun. Not far from scene of the Florida high school shooting, another man brought his assault weapon to police and asked them to destroy it.

In response to the killings of 17 people by a 19-yearold with an AR-15, some gun owners are waging personal protests against mass shootings.

The AR-15 is the gun drawing the most scorn during these public displays of destruction playing out on social media. Their owners say they love it, but enough is enough.

Scott Pappalardo is one such owner. Sitting in the backyard of his home in Scotchtown, New York, cradling the Eagle AR-15 rifle he’d owned for 30 years, Pappalardo called himself a firm believer in the Second Amendment, but he said he’s pained by the steady drumbeat of mass shootings.

“Here we are, 17 more lives lost. So when do we change? When do we make laws that say maybe a weapon like this isn’t acceptable in today’s society?” he said in a video on his Facebook page.

With that, he turned around and put a saw to his rifle. That was Feb. 17, and five days later, it had received more than 375,000 likes.

Pappalardo, 50, said it was a tough decision. He loved target shooting with the gun and has been a gun owner for decades. He even sports a tattoo showing a firearm.

“It was almost like taking my sick dog out in the backyard and putting it out of its misery,” Pappalardo said. “And I said to my wife before I did it, ‘I can’t believe I’m about to go outside and cut up my gun.’”

The AR-15 remains an incredibly popular weapon across America — the National Shooting Sports Foundation says there are about 12 million AR-style firearms in circulation — and the people destroying them represent a small fraction of the gun’s owners.